Before the Mask

by Michael Williams

  "The Amarach again?" the mage asked, his hidden eyes narrowing, and Verminaard steeled himself for the lecture-how the stones were a child's toy and the desperate preoccupation of the old, who read them fearfully, imagining they could augur their own dates of death.

  "It will be your undoing, Master Verminaard," the mage had always told him. "Forgo this clerical nonsense and attend to the hunt and the castle and your studies."

  But not this time. For some reason, the mage's reply floated away from lectures. Lazily, with a slow, almost reptilian movement, he rose from the chair.

  "And what might the runes tell you that good common sense would not?" he asked as Verminaard reached to his belt for the pouch that contained the carved stones.

  "Common sense tells me to consult the runes, sir."

  The mage smiled wearily. Verminaard opened the bag and poured the runestones into the mage's cupped hands.

  "Think of the question, Master Verminaard," Cerestes said, lifting the stones over the lad's head.

  Verminaard nodded solemnly and then, with his eyes closed, reached up and drew three stones. He dropped them to the floor, one after the other, in a coarse, almost careless manner.

  Cerestes crouched over the stones and stared at the lad. "What is the question?" he asked again into the silence, as Verminaard fidgeted and looked to the window, where the stars seemed to weave and fade.

  The lad inhaled and confessed his plan.

  "There's a girl…"

  "At twenty-one, there generally is," Cerestes observed dryly, and then remembered Takhisis's words. "Go on."

  "I-I saw her at the edge of the stone bridge. On the day of the hunt and the ambush."

  Cerestes nodded, his golden eyes suddenly fixed and intent. Heartened, Verminaard burst forth with the rest of his secret.

  "She's been in my thoughts for a season, sir. She's the bandits' prisoner, for no man binds his ally."

  "Aglaca might tell you otherwise," the mage observed sardonically, his intensity vanished and his eyes hooded and vague. "Or Abelaard. But you want to rescue this girl?"

  "Read the runes, sir. Please?"

  The mage turned to the stones at his feet, touching each with the tip of a bony finger as his hand moved slowly from left to right. "Birch. Thunder. The Hammer," he murmured, and glanced up at the lad. "If there were anything to this musty augury, Verminaard, I would take this as pleasant prospects indeed. Inspired by the woman, you make a journey of beginnings. At the final aspect is the Hammer-symbol both of the power of giants and

  the source of that power."

  Verminaard's eyes widened. "It is as I imagined, then. I am destined to find her!"

  Cerestes shook his head. "Caution, young master, caution. Remember the placement of the stones."

  His hand repeated the pattern, moving slowly left to right, touching each stone in turn.

  "That which was. That which is. That which is yet to be-not 'that which is sure to happen.' "

  "I won't tell Father that you read the runes for me," Verminaard said, with a wide, wolfish smile.

  Cerestes turned toward the window, hiding a similar smile of his own. The skull of Chemosh was brilliantly visible now, framed by stone and darkness and the deep purple western sky. It could not have been easier.

  So it was that Verminaard of Nidus received the blessing of the mage and the veiled direction of the rune stones. He did not linger in Cerestes' chambers, for the hour was late and he had much to do on the morrow. Gathering the stones, he bowed respectfully and backed out the door as it closed softly.

  The mage remained at the window, pondering the shifting stars and the cool eddies of night wind on the keep below him as it scattered straw and pale leaves. Cerestes' smile widened.

  The game was beginning, and he did so relish a game. Already Takhisis had set her plans in motion, obscure to the mage for now, but he did not need the details yet.

  The mysterious girl was on her way, and it was enough. From a distance, the unwitting lad was being drawn toward her, toward a shadowy form he had seen, or rather glimpsed, months ago on a cloudy mountain afternoon.

  They would bring this woman to Castle Nidus, and with her safely beneath his roof, Cerestes was sure that it would take little time to uncover her secret.

  But the road to Neraka was long and menacing. It crossed the high and desolate grasslands south of the castle, bending east through a narrow pass between foothills surrounding Mount Berkanth and the infamous Nerakan Forest. And even then, after perilous miles of travel, the journey was not over. A southward path took the traveler on between two volcanoes now smoldering and seething with new life. Only then would Verminaard reach the encampments that surrounded the city, and only then would his search for the girl begin in earnest.

  In the heart of Neraka, where the Dark Queen was raising a hidden temple.

  The mage backed away from the window and settled into his soft chair. The night had turned, and the stars seemed to tilt and beckon as the first birds of the morning awakened and the servants rose as well. The silence was broken by a tentative song from an aderyn perched somewhere on the battlements, followed by the lonely footsteps of a groom as he shuffled across the bailey to the stables.

  Cerestes closed his eyes for a moment, drifting on the soft fading of the night. The runes had encouraged the lad, as Cerestes knew they would. It was why he had invented the obscure and hopeful reading, spinning a story out of the flat and meaningless stones.

  He laughed scornfully at human foolishness. Until the blank rune was sounded, its symbol recovered, a man might as well read his fingernails for augury.

  Cerestes rose from the chair and glided to the center of the room.

  It might be as Takhisis claimed, he thought, casting a spell to mask his thoughts in case others-perhaps even the Dark Queen herself-used the night and his dream

  state to pry into his thought. Perhaps the girl had been chosen by Paladine to carry, somehow, the secret of the vanished rune. If that were true, then she carried a powerful knowledge, the key to an omniscient oracle. Armed with that oracle, Takhisis could find the green gemstone, the last component to the portal she was building in Neraka. It was the cornerstone to her temple, and once it was in place, she could return to the world of Krynn, to the bright and agreeable world she had once poisoned and sullied, that she would again cover with her own abiding darkness.

  But the same oracle in another's hand could stop her entry entirely.

  And establish a darkness of his own.

  And what, indeed, might be accomplished with both of Huma's kin?

  Cerestes smiled and knelt by the hearth, idly tracing the patterns of the runes in the ashes of the hearthstone.

  Birch. Thunder. Hammer. They could apply to him as well-better, in fact, than to a lad's moonstruck plans of rescue.

  He stilled his rising excitement, gathering his robes and curling up on the hearth. He lay there like a sleeping cat, like a coiled serpent.

  Once again, he told himself, the blank rune's faces were still missing. And until they were restored, all auguries were in vain. And yet the stark symbols of Verminaard's reading occupied his thoughts when he closed his eyes___

  Birch. Thunder. Hammer.

  He drifted off to a deep dragon's sleep that would rest him well by the afternoon. He would awaken by the hearth, his black robes chalked and smeared with ashes, his heart resolved to follow Verminaard to Neraka.

  For after all, Verminaard and Aglaca must be protected, since Daeghrefn paid Cerestes' wages. Surely Takhisis would agree.

  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 s
tones lay secrets as mysterious as those housed in the sixteenth and hidden rune. But these were different secrets-of 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 secrets-the 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 stable-one for himself, and one for the returning girl-and 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 night-with the banked clouds and the summer winds dying-would 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 silence-a 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 castle-the 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 gladly-castle 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.

  Chapter 7

  "What are you doing here?" Verminaard hissed, his fist hovering an inch from Aglaca's face.

  "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 light-from 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 …