Before the Mask

by Michael Williams

  It was Aglaca's fault, the Voice soothed, gliding into his deepest thoughts as he sulked in the saddle. He could have joined the ceremony, closed the circle of the hunt with a simple cast of the spear. He refused, out of a stupid and blind loyalty to a vanished god . . . and Osman died for Aglaca's pride and his helplessness. If he'd been man enough to kill the centicore …

  Verminaard rode home in the middle of the column, Aglaca beside him. Over the mile and a half from the box canyon to the edge of the plains, the smaller lad never spoke, but when they reached the foothills and the narrow pass that led through Taman Busuk and south toward Castle Nidus, Aglaca finally addressed him. The brisk

  wind that met them erased all memory of the grasslands, the rank smell of centicore, and the sweat of terror-stricken horses.

  "Your father will come around, Verminaard," Aglaca soothed. "He's wounded over the loss of Osman, but he'll see soon enough that your act was courageous, that you were only trying to help me out."

  Verminaard winced at this new needling but kept silent, his eyes fixed on the path in front of them. Once, maybe twice, Aglaca thought that his companion was ready to speak, but each time the other lad shook his head and sank back into a gloomy quiet.

  They passed over a stone bridge, wider by far than Dreed, where the horses walked three abreast and the riders, forced to dismount and lead the animals, trudged over the causeway of rock and gravel, exchanging muted conversation and stories about Osman's bravery.

  "What's this bridge called, Verminaard?" Aglaca asked.

  "Bandit's Bone" came the answer, muttered and clipped.

  "Is there some burial ground here?"

  Verminaard was about to loose a tirade upon Aglaca, to berate him for his pride and smugness and self-righteous, bloody-minded ways, when suddenly the air bristled with arrows. Rising from the rocks on the far side of the bridge ahead, a dozen archers aimed, fired, and reloaded as the rider at the front of Daeghrefn's column toppled over the bridge and into the gorge, the black shaft of a Nerakan arrow run through his back.

  "Nerakans!" Daeghrefn roared. "Ambush!"

  From the rocks behind them came a second group of bandits, also armed with bows, and instantly another deluge of arrows poured down on Daeghrefn's party. The relentless barrage eclipsed the midday sun, and the warriors on the rock bridge milled in confusion, while men before and behind Verminaard toppled into the gorge, some shot through several times.

  Daeghrefn whirled in the saddle and shouted orders to his men. Verminaard strained to hear his father through the strange, aggressive yells of the Nerakan archers as they launched volley after volley upon the trapped hunters. But then the lad's eyes brought him the news as all the men turned their shields toward the far

  Chapter 5

  side of the bridge and, risking the arrows that whined and clattered on the stones behind them, lurched angrily toward the homeward side of the gorge like a long, armored serpent.

  Slowly they moved toward the bandits, toward the ragged men who now discarded their bows and drew forth long knives and rusty maces. When Verminaard reached solid ground, there were ten of his party ahead, swords locked with their Nerakan adversaries, and the drift of battle was already shifting toward Daeghrefn, toward the commander of Castle Nidus.

  Verminaard looked behind him. Aglaca leapt off the stone bridge and found safer footing, but past him lay a sprawl of bodies. A dozen of Daeghrefn's men slumped, dead or dying, on the stone bridge, and three more had fallen into the gorge. Fifteen in all, a dreadful blow to the castle garrison.

  Ahead of the young men, the Nerakans made another vicious assault. Crouching and sidling like maniacal crabs, they would have been ludicrous if it hadn't been for their long knives, sharp and glittering. Daeghrefn's men backed unsteadily to the bridge, their shields raised again and their swords waving fruitlessly. Another man fell to Nerakan knives-Edred, it was, and he called out only once as the bandits swarmed over him. Soon the whole party, from Daeghrefn down to Verminaard and Aglaca, were huddled together behind their horses at the edge of the gorge, their feet slipping in rubble, their swords held narrowly before them. They braced themselves against the Nerakans, who regrouped not twenty feet from their makeshift lines, preparing for yet another charge.

  Cramped against Aglaca on one side, with Robert on the other, Verminaard looked over his shoulder, past the huddle of horses to the bridge. There, amid the cluttered corpses, the first Nerakan archers had set foot on the

  rocky span.

  Far behind them, on the other side of the chasm, a girlish form burst forth from the rocks, galloping on a roan mare, chased by two mounted bandits. Hooded and slight, her red robes kirtled around her thighs, she seemed diminished, almost elflike before her two hulking pursuers.

  On her right leg was a prisoner's tattoo, the hand-sized silhouette of a dragon's black head.

  The girl raised her hands toward the battle, and Verminaard noticed the ropes that bound her wrists together.

  A captive, he thought. And a lovely one. She is blond and fair, I'm sure. …

  What am I thinking of, here at sword's point? He shook his head to fling loose the distracting thoughts as the men around him stumbled forward. Overtaken by the bandits, the girl and her horse moved into the rocks. When Verminaard looked back, she was gone.

  Finally the bandits had taken account of numbers. They were turning, retreating before Daeghrefn's superior forces, and the Lord of Nidus's troops were driving them, pressing in with their swords and shouting the names of the fallen.

  Over the rocks and the gravel they chased the Nerakans, leaving the bridge, rushing up the mountain pass until the bandits vanished among the branching paths and the crags of the towering cliff face.

  Just ahead of Verminaard and Aglaca, drawing his sword and casting his bulky shield aside, old Robert shouted and redoubled his pursuit of a scraggly, bearded Nerakan, who ducked into a tight passage and vanished.

  "Follow me!" the seneschal cried, and when Aglaca hesitated, the veteran turned and scowled at him comically.

  "After me, Lord Aglaca!" Robert rumbled. "Lest that

  sword of yours is good only for slicing beetles in the garden!"

  Recklessly the old man pivoted and lurched after the retreating Nerakan, and Verminaard and Aglaca, soon lost amid the maze of rock and rubble, followed.

  Verminaard's thoughts outpaced his feet, and he fell behind. The girl… I should have rescued her, burst back over the bridge like a questing knight. I could have found the way amid the archers and carried her off from her captors. She would have …

  He blinked stupidly. It was the Voice that spoke to him now, entirely enmeshed with his own thoughts. Ahead, Robert turned, slipped between two narrow rocks …

  And immediately there came an outcry, the sound of too many voices. Instead of one Nerakan, there were three.

  Bursting through the narrow passage after Aglaca, Verminaard saw the old seneschal hemmed in by a pair of bandits. One had forced him against a black rock face, while another, dagger in hand, had scrambled into the rocks above. He was coiled like an adder, waiting his chance to strike. The third, crouched not ten feet away, produced a poniard from a long sleeve and drew back to throw it.

  With a ringing cry, Aglaca sprang toward the rocks, his feet and short sword whirling. The perched Nerakan started, lost his footing as he clutched vainly for the rock face, and fell, breaking his neck. Aglaca's small sword broke the arcing poniard in midair, and he was on its owner in an instant. Verminaard circled the struggling pair, sword at the ready but somehow locked out of the combat. Robert took the second man down with a neat cut to his hamstring.

  Aglaca wrestled gamely with the bandit, who was far larger and stronger. The Solamnic couldn't get leverage to use his sword. All the while, the dark Voice continued to

  Stir Verminaard's deepest imagining….

  Let them be. What if the bandit wins? Surely Laca would do nothing to Abelaard if his son met with … an accident of battle. An
d Aglaca brought it on himself with his arrogant refusal to cast the ceremonial spear….

  Verminaard stopped, the sword tilted uncertainly in his hand. The bandit rolled free, braced his back against the obsidian rock face, and, setting his feet to Aglaca's chest, launched the lad into the air with a compact, powerful push of his legs.

  Aglaca rattled against the far wall of the passage, his sword loosed and clattering across the rock floor. Stunned by the blow, he groped vainly for the long knife at his belt. The bellowing Nerakan leapt to his feet, skidding crazily over gravel, and sprang toward the Solamnic lad, another glinting poniard seeking his throat.

  Aglaca's senses cleared, and he found the hilt of his knife. In the split second after the bandit left his feet, the boy drew the weapon, raised it swiftly and certainly …

  And met the bandit's last charge as he tumbled fiercely upon Aglaca's blade. The bandit's mouth went slack, and his eyes grew wide. Aglaca gazed up at him, coolly and straight on, until he slumped over in a heap.

  Robert, meanwhile, had disposed of his hamstrung opponent. Dazed, kneeling in the rubble, he gathered himself and weaved dizzily to his feet, looking with amazement at the young man who had come to his rescue.

  Verminaard, his weapon shamefully clean, shrank into the shadows, hoping somehow that the darkness would swallow him, hide him from blaming eyes….

  "You surely plucked those two off of me, Master Aglaca," the seneschal muttered.

  Aglaca smiled and dusted off his breastplate and tunic. Dripping with sweat and scraped by his scuffle among the rocks, he leaned against a large stone until he had

  gathered balance and breath. "They weren't much different from any other kind of pest, Robert/' he replied with a chuckle. Robert, too, broke into a laugh as he recalled his previous taunt. As the battle tension drained from them, they noticed Verminaard, who stood between the narrow rocks, drawn sword still frozen in his hand.

  Say nothing, the Voice urged. Whatever you do, do not say it…, They do not know you were here. He has no idea….

  Verminaard did as he was told.

  The Solamnic lad looked Verminaard over carefully, then wiped his brow. "So at last you found us, Verminaard!" he said curiously. "'Twas tight quarters here. We could've used your arm."

  "Indeed we could," Robert grumbled, eyeing him skeptically. He could have sworn he'd seen Verminaard earlier in the fray. Hobbling a bit from the basting he had suffered at the hands of the Nerakans, he limped past the young man back onto the mountain trail, headed toward the bridge and the rest of his companions.

  "No matter," Aglaca quickly added, his voice cheerful and melodious. "No matter, because, as you see, there was no harm in your delay, no bruise in your waiting."

  They found Daeghrefn not far from the bridge, gathering his men and reckoning his losses.

  Of the forty retainers who had embarked on the morning's hunt with the Lord of Nidus, only two dozen remained. Osman, of course, had fallen in the encounter with the centicore. The Nerakan ambush had killed fifteen of Daeghrefn's finest troops.

  When two of the retainers, rough farm boys from Kern, returned from the chase bearing two Nerakan heads on pikes, Daeghrefn turned away and said nothing, for he

  shared their bitterness and anger. Aside from that pair of especially unfortunate bandits and the three slain by Aglaca and Robert, the skirmish had brought no recompense for Daeghrefn's forces. The Nerakans had vanished into the rocks, leaving dead men and disarray on the paths behind them.

  And the girl, Verminaard thought, standing in the background while Robert told Daeghrefn how Aglaca had shown mettle and speed in the struggle with the bandits. Whoever she was . . . bound and captive and . . . and in deep distress, I know.

  Daeghrefn nodded brusquely at Robert's speech. Aglaca might be Laca's son, but despite the ancient quarrel, the boy had conducted himself with exceptional gallantry. He glanced from the disheveled, amiable Solamnic youth to the other, the darker, larger, and decidedly unfa-tigued presence, who sat atop his horse now, lost in a labyrinth of thought.

  Verminaard didn't notice that Daeghrefn had looked at him, for his mind was elsewhere, high on the far and sunlit side of the stone bridge.

  Had I but the chance to prove it, she … she would…

  He couldn't imagine what would happen.

  Trapped in his own reflections, communing with the dark Voice that arose from his thoughts and from somewhere deeper than his thoughts, he rode back to Castle Nidus, trailing the column.

  From the battlements of Castle Nidus, sentries watched the approach of Daeghrefn's beaten line of riders. Almost at once, the sharper-eyed among them began to count, and counted again, as two dozen men rode in from the waning light of the foothills, torches already lifted against

  the oncoming evening.

  Quickly, with rising apprehension, the sentries alerted the castle. Soon, with murmurings and rumor, everyone assembled in the bailey yard. There the kitchen sweep shifted from foot to foot next to the old astrologer from Estwilde, and the falconer leaned uneasily against the wall of the keep, exchanging hushed words with the cook. None had foreseen this grim news. Never had a routine hunt been so disastrous, and only twice before had the Nerakans attacked anyone this close to Nidus.

  Aglaca turned over the day's unhappy events in his mind and knew that it would be a long time before he could go home to East Borders. Eight long years past… how many more to go until some sort of peace would release him from Nidus? His youth was being poured out in the gebo-naud, and by now he should have attained his knighthood. Or maybe even his most secret desire-to serve Paladine with all his being.

  Perhaps Daeghrefn had been right about his needing a guard to keep him from answering the call of East Borders. Like the dead of the day, Aglaca had not chosen his fate nor his company.

  Perched at the mouth of a high cave, almost a mile above the three lofty turrets of the castle, there was one who understood more clearly. Cerestes shielded his golden eyes against the red slant of sun and counted the approaching troops. Then his gaze narrowed and focused, and the birds around the mouth of the cavern hushed in a sort of fearful expectancy.

  This time he could count the holes in the tattered foremost banner. Eagerly his sight raced down the column.

  Good. Aglaca and Verminaard both were there.

  Satisfied, he stalked into the growing darkness, into an enormous circular chamber, void of light and wind and silent except for the perpetual dripping of water somewhere even farther back in the cave.

  It was the appointed spot. She had told him in a dream, when he had begged her again to reveal his purpose in this place. Though the years in Daeghrefn's service were not long as his kind measured time, she had kept him beyond his patience.

  Softly at first, insinuating her voice with the slow, rhythmic music of the water, she came to him, the Dark Queen Takhisis, foremost in the evil pantheon, her voice as intimate as his own thoughts.

  So this is how it is for them, Cerestes mused. For Aglaca and Verminaard, to whom she has spoken since childhood. How they hear her voice in their own imaginings.

  This is no game, the goddess reminded him, her voice louder now, sweet and low-pitched like the distant murmur of bees, like the sound of the night over Godshome. What care you for their hearing, for the soft persuasions that bring them to me? Those are mine and theirs. Are they aught of your concern?

  "Of course not," Cerestes replied, knowing her question was no question, but a grim reminder of his boundaries.

  Deep in the recesses of the cavern, the sound of the water ceased. He was alone now, with his thoughts and her quiet and sinuous voice.

  Become yourself, cleric, Takhisis urged. Reveal your true self before your queen.

  Cerestes coughed and glanced nervously toward the faint sliver of light behind him.

  Oh, we are alone, she soothed. Those below are far too concerned with ambush and accident, rapt in the counting of their little deaths. None have followed you here.


  "Are you sure?" he asked, and regretted his words at once.

  In the depths of the cavern, the darkness roiled and swirled.

  This is no time for questions, the Lady said, and her darkness surged to surround Cerestes. The void tugged at him, molding him, drawing him from his body into an older, more familiar shape, forsaken for years. A green half-light sweated from the walls, and he saw the floor of the chamber, the rows of stalagmites like jagged teeth, the litter of broken bones and charcoal.

  He saw his hands, as well, as they began the painful metamorphosis that the Lady commanded, as the red webbing sprouted between his fingers and the fingers themselves grew into long claws with a crackling of bone and tendon. Once he cried out, as always he did when the Change first swept over him, but the cry had already passed beyond human, into a terrible shriek, like the tearing of metal. The muscles of his legs bunched and doubled, his ribs buckled and tugged as wings burst forth from his back, and he was growing now, yes, Cerestes was growing, into what he had always been, would always be. The red of his scales blackened in the green light of the chamber, in the familiar blood and the burning that marked this metamorphosis. And the laughter of Takhisis rang so loudly in his mind that he covered his receded ears, imagining that the noise had burst out of his thoughts and rung the cavern walls.