Before the Mask

by Michael Williams

  In that moment and from that vantage, there in the tangling light of Solinari and Lunitari, the twining moons, silver and red, it seemed to Verminaard that the mage's

  skin was almost insubstantial. It shimmered and glowed with a strange translucence, shifting in a luminous cloud until Cerestes seemed a cloud himself, then a shadow, then a dwindling black light on the crenels, like the light Verminaard had seen in the cave where he found the mace.

  Then suddenly Cerestes emerged, and thin ebony lightning danced over his sleeves, on his hands, on his fingers…

  And the shadow he cast on the tower walls was reptilian, enormous, disproportionate even for moon-crazed battlements.

  Verminaard gasped, recalling the shadow on the moon.

  And then Cerestes looked like himself once more, the black robe shimmering faintly, almost shabby now in the clouded moonlight.

  Only strange light, Verminaard thought. Or weariness from my battle yesterday. Or a simple magic on a cloud-struck night-a spell for sleep, perhaps, or to augur the fitful stars. The young man climbed the ladder to stand by his tutor.

  "Out at the edge of sight," Cerestes said, forgoing greeting as though he had known Verminaard was there all along, "there's still a fire. See? If you look long enough toward the South Moraine …"

  Verminaard stared across the darkening plain. He could see no fire from where he stood, but then Cerestes' eyesight had always been better than his.

  Expressionlessly the mage turned to his pupil.

  "The real courage came when you trusted Night-bringer," he explained quietly.

  Verminaard frowned. "Nightbringer?"

  Cerestes nodded. "The'mace. 'Nightbringer' is the name it went by in Godshome. Powerful it is, but how would you know? How would you believe in it without courage?"

  The lad smiled wider.

  "I know what you mean, Cerestes," he said. "When Father left the Order .. . stopped believing in it… they say he changed. I don't remember the time, but Abelaard said that a sort of daring left him when Daeghrefn left the old gods, and that in its place was something . .. small. Something not at all, perhaps.

  "But 'Nightbringer,' you say? The name of the mace is 'Nightbringer' ? "

  Cerestes nodded. "We had heard of it for years, knew it would be found by a chosen one, by a special one …"

  Verminaard's ears felt hot. He looked to the sky, where the last vestiges of smoke had faded and dispersed, and the clouds parted over the red moon Lunitari. There was something Aglaca had told him long ago, something about the Voice, about why he refused to believe it.

  Verminaard could not remember.

  "And that's me, I suppose?" he asked. "The chosen one?"

  "They spoke of you in Godshome," Cerestes replied, and something had deepened in his voice, choiring and resonating, until Verminaard realized there were two voices speaking: the old familiar voice he had heard in the classroom, at table, and on the battlements until this night, this moment, and another voice below that-a Voice even more familiar, more intimate, low and musical and feminine-and together the voices praised him, reassured him.

  "You are the mace-wielder, the chosen one. Unto you will fall this castle, this country, and the mountains from the foothills of Estwilde to the peaks of the Doom Range and the breathless heights of Berkanth."

  Cerestes shimmered as he spoke, and his skin seemed to ripple and change. And then he was strangely diminished in the cloud and spell light.

  "Your rule," he said, his voice as dry and thin as the

  scorched grass at the foot of the castle wall, "begins tonight. Your father is no father, but weak and distracted and lost."

  And Cerestes told him the story of that night years ago. Of Laca's transgressions with Daeghrefn's wife . . . and that Verminaard's true father was Laca Dragonbane, Lord of East Borders.

  "I knew it all along," Verminaard replied, masking his astonishment, averting his eyes. "Not-not that my father was Laca. I didn't know that. But that he was not, could not be Daeghrefn."

  It was Cerestes' turn to smile.

  "Then there's prophecy in you as well, Lord Verminaard. Father or no father, Nidus is yours-not by blood, but by virtue and might. Soon there will be worlds elsewhere to conquer. But now, in the wake of your victory, there are smaller and sweeter conquests as well."

  Verminaard glanced at him curiously.

  Cerestes returned the look as his smile broadened to a leer. "When you took up the mace, you traded one girl for another. But the first one is still there-the first fruits of your power, if you'd have her. Go to her, lad. If you are not too late with your caution and false kindness, there is still a chance that she will be yours, and yours tonight. After all, she saw Nightbringer in your victorious hand."

  It was something Verminaard had not considered. He had been too busy with rescues, with caverns and ogres and fires. But now the girl seemed like the first and best prospect. Verminaard's eyes grew bright, and he threw back his head and laughed harshly.

  Cerestes had seen the look before on the face of young men-not courting swains bearing sonnets and flowers, but the young raiders at the borders of the enemy, bearing arms into unprotected country.

  As the first of Daeghrefn's soldiers nodded with wine and the late hour, Aglaca pushed away from the table.

  He had eaten little, drunk less. The events of the last nights and days had been unsettling. Now was a time for moonlight and fresh air. A walk in the bailey would clear his senses and leave behind the smoke and noise.

  Silently he crossed the dark courtyard. The silver harp of Branchala, a score of white stars, shone in the cloud-crossed sky, and he passed by the dimly lit stable, where the new groom struggled with the uneasy horses.

  In the shadow of the southern wall, something turned slowly, a pale garment catching the edge of the moonlight. Instinctively Aglaca reached for his dagger. Then Judyth stepped from the shadows and stared calmly at him, her remarkable eyes charged with reflected starlight. Gazing into them for a brief, breathless moment, Aglaca saw the blue in the depths of lavender.

  "What should we do about Verminaard?" she began. "I-I saw him storm up to the battlements. He'll kill Daeghrefn, if not now, eventually. And then what shall we-"

  Aglaca stepped forward and gently placed a finger to her lips. He pulled her back into the shadows, out of the sight of sentries and dangerous rivals.

  "Nothing," he whispered. "For we can do nothing. 'Tis a struggle between son and father. It began long before I came. Who knows when and how it will end?"

  "But you saw what Verminaard did."

  "That and worse," Aglaca conceded. "But we can do nothing yet, except ward against a growing evil."

  He handed Judyth the little dagger.

  "I think of Verminaard getting the hero's portion," Judyth muttered hotly, slipping the weapon up her sleeve,

  "then I think of you, going about acts of kindness instead of butchery. How you helped those helpless men to horse, risking yourself at each moment. An ogre could have wakened, could have risen up and-"

  "You did the same, Lady Judyth," Aglaca said, brushing her hair from her eyes. "Entirely the same, in the prospect of the same fire and ogres." "But you were the one in the tunnels." "And you showed me how to master the warding." They laughed, and Aglaca thought it was good that there were shadows here, that Judyth could not see his face grow red.

  "I suppose we both have earned the true hero's portion," he murmured. Slowly he wrapped his arms about her waist and drew her closer.

  Her eyes closed in the dark, and her lips parted.

  Descending from the battlements, Verminaard heard muffled laughter from the shadows below.

  He stopped on the ladder, caution giving way to curiosity. After all, sounds such as these promised no ambush, no escaping hostage or prisoner. Quietly, holding his breath, he leaned forward on the ladder …

  And saw the couple kissing, embracing, the girl's dark hair caught in a thin shaft of moonlight.

  Dark hair, dark
skin…

  He imagined the lavender eyes, the tattoo, and he knew who it was that stood with her in the dark beneath the walls. For a moment, he reeled on the ladder, and the thoughts of murder that rose through the heart of his anger were murky and monstrous, as deep as the caverns that spawned them.

  I shall not forget this, Aglaca, he thought. And he

  perched there, huddled in blackness like a roosting raven until the couple walked across the bailey back toward the lamplit keep.

  Chapter 14

  In the hands of the druidess, the seneschal recovered miraculously.

  Robert had expected the mending to take weeks, perhaps months, given his age and the severity of the broken bone. But within two days, the bones had knitted, and in a week's time he was walking-warily, unsteadily, and with a hardwood cane, but walking nonetheless.

  L'Indasha had carried and dragged him above the worst of the fire, to a small cave in the foothills due east of the Neraka Forest. The cave itself was pleasant enough, bright and neat and well settled. In its recesses, surrounded by a cage of drasil roots, a fresh underground spring bubbled and spouted, and the druidess's stores-barrels of dried fruit and waybread wrapped in moist, preservative vallen-

  wood leaves-had escaped the burning when the ogres' fires razed the countryside. The stores served L'Indasha and her guest as their sole source of food while Robert was immobilized and the forest began to heal.

  In that same week, as Robert grew stronger, L'Indasha had grown increasingly distressed. Robert had watched as the woman's bright auburn hair became muted and brown, as though she were enduring a kind of gloomy autumn of the heart. Her once-bright eyes grew dull and lifeless, and her skin seemed to tighten, to become almost transparent, until one afternoon, three days after the fire, the seneschal believed she would just dwindle away. He feared that the next morning would find him disabled and alone on the hilltop, his only companion and guardian fallen like a dried leaf.

  That had been a week ago. There were signs of late that L'Indasha was now recovering, but from what ailment, what mishap, Robert could only guess.

  At first he had thought it was the strange and lingering discomforts of an unknown intrusion, for when L'Indasha had brought him back to the cave, she discovered that someone else had been there. While she tended to Robert's leg, the druidess had fretted over the disarray that someone had wrought amid the kindling and stores, and- oddly enough, the seneschal thought-seemed even more concerned about a wooden bucket that had been moved. Finally, and as the last insult, she had discovered that some prized piece of jewelry, a pendant with a purple stone, was missing.

  It was a day or two before Robert gently inquired and found that her anger and sorrow had more to do with the fire in the forest and foothills than with burglary or trespass.

  "It makes sense now," he said to her. "After all, don't you druids worship trees?"

  "Of course not," she said. "We love them and tend

  them, but they are only our responsibility, not our gods. They and all the other life of the land. My gardens. The flowers. You see, when a tree dies, it takes a while-several days, even when the damage is severe and sudden. The agony is constant until the roots go. And what fell to the fire a week ago was the show of my life's work. How would you feel?"

  Robert thought of South Moraine and of the departing horsemen. "I see," he murmured.

  And he did.

  On the eighth day, she examined his leg, her strong, gentle fingers coursing from ankle to knee, and her own hollow countenance showed a little color and life once more as she pronounced him mended.

  "Mended, that is. Not healed," she insisted. "You'll do the healing yourself-with walk and exercise and a change in heart from fear to certainty."

  "Will you walk with me, Lady?" the seneschal asked with a grin. "I mean .. . seeing as it's medicinal and all? Perhaps I could be of some use to you as well."

  So they began their walks as the seneschal's leg grew stronger and the spirit of the druidess was restored in the soft rains and new undergrowth of the repairing land.

  But little was left of the grove-covered foothills to the east. The fire had climbed practically to the height of the mountains, and except for the steepest peaks-Berkanth, for example, and Minith Luc-the foliage was blasted to the timberline, and the big trees would take years to recover or return.

  Perhaps he had never understood the druids before now, Robert thought, glancing often at the woman who walked beside him, turning away as her intent brown eyes locked with his. All the talk he had heard in Nidus- of tree worship, of entombing enemies in hollow logs, of stealing babies-seemed like rumor and foolishness now. For what he saw in this woman was none of the mystical,

  green treachery against which a generation of mages had warned him. She was instead a keeper of life, a seneschal of the land.

  He thought again of Daeghrefn, of the riders vanishing into the smoke, of the words hurled coldly at him from horseback: I'm sorry, Robert! I cannot help you where you are going.

  "Are you alone?" he continued to ask, and asked again one day as they stood on a bare obsidian rise overlooking the plains. There, scarce a fortnight before, he had been left for dead by his commander. "Are you alone, L'Indasha Yman?"

  Her hair-bright auburn again, as though the last days had been but a fitful, nightmarish dream-was bound with dried holly. She looked up at him, her dark eyes hooded and elusive. She thought of the promise the god had made her twenty years before. "Not for long," she murmured. "Or so says Paladine."

  Robert nodded. He leaned against his cane and climbed a step along the rising trail.

  "And when does your… visitor arrive?"

  "I had been told," the druidess replied, "to expect her any day."

  "Her?"

  "Yes. I believe my visitor is a woman, sent to help me with a wearisome task," L'Indasha said mysteriously. Then, turning toward Robert, she regarded him with a level, disarming directness.

  "Do you remember the young woman who passed through the smoke that afternoon on the South Moraine, when you lay on the field of battle? She is the one. At least, I think she is. But I found her only to lose her, it seems."

  "I remember little of her, m'Lady," the seneschal replied with an ironic smile. He bent and rubbed his leg. "I must allow that my thoughts were elsewhere at the

  time-on fire and ogres and what in the devouring name of Hiddukel was happening in that purple smoke. But I am certain of the young men who rode with her. If they were homeward bound, they're no doubt in Castle Nidus."

  "I believe I am healed now," Robert said the next morning.

  The druidess glanced up alertly from a caldron.

  "Healed, not merely mended," the seneschal continued with a smile. "I expect I've imposed on your hospitality too long."

  "Where will you go?" L'Indasha asked.

  "I'm not sure. Not back to Nidus." He rose carefully and walked without aid to the mouth of the cavern. Below, at the edge of the forest, there was more green than blackness and ruin, and to the south, the faint song of a larkenvale. L'Indasha's work had not been in vain, he noted, and more than ever he longed to stay with her, to see through the greening of a thousand things.

  "You offered to be of service not long ago," L'Indasha said, seeming to read his thoughts. "And there's a journey I must make-not an easy one, but you say you're healed now."

  Robert leaned against the stone and smiled. "Nidus?"

  L'Indasha shook her head from side to side. "From here, I can feel the power of Cerestes' warding spell about the castle. If I were to go to Nidus, the Lady would know at once of my presence. She would have me, and the girl's life would be forfeit."

  Robert nodded. "Nidus or Neraka or the ends of the earth, my offer of service stands. Where might we be heading?"

  "North . .. then up," the druidess announced, standing and dusting off her green robes. In the new light of the morning, she looked even younger, as though over the last week she had shed twenty years. "To the slopes
of Berkanth, that mountain sacred to Paladine. Then a rocky climb to ice."

  L'Indasha picked up the wooden bucket. "I can take this along now that I've your arm to aid with the carrying."

  Robert's face reddened, and he looked away.

  "Wherever my helper is," L'Indasha declared, "in Nidus or Neraka or at the edges of the earth, it is on Berkanth I shall find that help. Take the provisions, if you would. They're in the linen sack near the back of the cave. And the blankets beside them as well. It will be cold traveling."

  Robert obeyed compliantly as the druidess brushed by him and up the narrow trail above the cavern. With a shrug, lifting the belongings to his shoulder, he followed, crossing the charred garden as the druidess took to the rocky path between obsidian cliffs, on her way to Berkanth, toward the highlands and the longer view.