Before the Mask

by Michael Williams

  He had never thought they would come to meet him.

  The gate of Laca's castle opened in the morning gray-ness, and five men rode forth beneath the standard of Dragonbane. Crossing the drawbridge and the outer ditch, they spread out on the plain and approached, each of them armed with the short cavalry spears favored by the mountain armies. Helmets and aventails masked their faces, and they were bundled against the cold wind as well, but from the silver kingfishers on their breastplates, Verminaard could tell that they were members of the Solamnic Order and therefore splendid fighters.

  Well, I shall speak with them, he thought. Tell them who I am and demand escort to Lord Laca himself.

  Speak? the Voice taunted. Do you think they have come to speak? They stand between you and your inheritance1.

  The mace lurched in his hand, flickering with a sudden ebony glow. Before he could protest or speak or even think otherwise, Verminaard found himself pulled by the weapon toward the standard-bearer, the centermost man in the rank. It was as though Nightbringer called him to battle, and he was impelled to answer.

  He remembered Aglaca's words in the deepest chambers of Nightbringer's cave: If you choose this, you'll forget that you can ever choose again.

  The standard-bearer reined in his horse and stopped on the level plain, his banner uplifted in the time-honored Solamnic sign of truce and parley. Verminaard rode to meet him, Nightbringer lowered and set across the front of the saddle, so that none of the Solamnics could see how tightly he gripped the weapon. He guided Orlog to the side of the standard-bearer, a green-eyed, freckled youth with red hair. The lad stared at Verminaard nervously, intently, and his fingers twitched on the banner pole.

  Nightbringer made the decision. Heedlessly, so quickly that Verminaard thought it was his own arm, his own doing, the mace flashed in the air and shrieked into the side of the man's head.

  In a crash of bone and metal, the standard-bearer hurtled from his horse. The other knights wheeled and galloped toward the black-robed invader.

  Verminaard glanced about. He was encircled-trapped in the midst of four charging knights. Orlog whinnied nervously and bucked, but the Voice in the mace soothed horse and rider.

  What if there are four? Would four men have daunted Lord Soth? My champions of a thousand, two thousand years ago? Fret not, Lord Verminaard, for I am with you, and your mace is the comfort I send.

  Verminaard smiled and faced the first of the oncoming

  enemy.

  The knight bent low in the saddle, couching the short spear in a jouster's attack. He charged, and Verminaard twisted as the spear tore through the folds of his black cape. Spinning with a raw, awkward power, Verminaard brought the mace thundering down upon the back of the passing knight, who slumped over his horse in a flood of black light and fell soundlessly to the dry plain.

  Three left, the Voice proclaimed. They'll come at you one by one, for honor's sake. Three, and the castle is yours.

  The next knight approached, circling and menacing like a Nerakan cavalryman, the short spear jabbing the air, waiting for an opening. The other two hung back, veiled spectators at the edge of sight. With a roar, Verminaard spurred Orlog toward the defiant man, who raised the spear and hurled it.

  Verminaard blocked the weapon with the mace, and black fire raced over his arm and shoulder as the spear splintered in the air. Steady, the Voice urged. Steady. Oh, is this not a lovely thing?

  Then Verminaard closed with the knight, who lifted his shield as he groped for the hilt of his sword. Verminaard rose in the saddle and brought down the mace with all of his weight and strength. The ornate silver kingfisher

  exploded in the heart of the shield, and the man rocked violently in the saddle. With a cry of triumph, Verminaard raised the weapon to strike again, but the knight's head lolled and his hand fell slack on the hilt of his half-drawn sword. The ropes that held him in the saddle snapped with his full weight, and he toppled from the horse, slain by the sheer force of the blow.

  Two remaining, the Voice coaxed, high and thin with excitement and delight. And you are coming to love this, my love, my love….

  And he was. Exultantly Verminaard galloped toward the last surviving Solamnics. One of them-the larger one-dismounted, suddenly and surprisingly, and motioned for Verminaard to do the same.

  "He wants it hand to hand and man to man!" Verminaard muttered, pulling up Orlog not a spear's cast from the valiant, honorable knight. "And if he is brave enough to offer the challenge, then so be it!"

  As he moved to dismount, the Voice resounded from the mace, dazing him, banishing his thoughts. You fool! There are two of them. When he has you afoot, then the other-

  But they don't fight that way, Verminaard thought. They're Solamnics! They don't…

  Unless things have changed.

  He leaned forward in the saddle, peering mistrustfully at the masked knight who awaited him. It would be just like the deceptive Solamnic Order to call him forth on a pretext of honor, then ambush him when he had given up the advantage. And yet something about this man …

  The Voice returned immediately, taking away the thought before it formed. Now! it urged. The sun is behind you! Now!

  Verminaard looked over his shoulder into the blinding, blood-red sunrise.

  Now!

  With a shout, he launched the stallion toward the

  knight, who blinked, dazzled by the sun, then leapt away just as Verminaard drove the mace by his head.

  "Midnight!" cried Verminaard, and the black light in Nightbringer's wake engulfed the man. He cried out once, struggled to his knees, and clutched his face.

  "I can't see!" he shouted, groping through the dry grass for his dropped weapon.

  Now! the Voice urged again. The mace has blinded him. Now!

  Chapter 18

  As he steered the horse toward the helpless man, his mace raised high for the killing blow, Verminaard saw something flash in the corner of his eye.

  The last of the knights swooped by, a silver blur as rider and horse crossed in front of him. With a shrill whistle, the man leaned out of the saddle, stretching his sinewy arm toward his blinded companion. In one graceful, incredibly powerful movement, he caught up the injured man, lifting him onto the horse, and together they rode toward the open castle gates. Verminaard, astonished, pressed his horse hard behind them.

  The Solamnic horse was now overburdened, but in the mile's gallop across the flatlands, Orlog's weariness made

  it hard for Verminaard to make up the distance. At last, sweeping wide around the hapless riders, Verminaard cut off the path to the castle bridge, and the Solamnic was forced to rein in his horse scarcely a hundred yards from the bailey walls. Resolutely the rider lowered his wounded companion and, rising in the saddle, faced Verminaard fearlessly.

  "Good adversary," the Knight called out, raising his sword in the traditional Solamnic salute, "you have shown yourself strong in arms and enduring in battle. I give you the chance to show honor as well."

  Listen to him! the Voice whispered as Nightbringer pulsed in Verminaard's hand. The Solamnic prattle of honor and code and oath is about to begin. Beware, my child: He will entangle you in honor.

  Verminaard nodded. The Voice was right. He had seen the honor-mongers before, and he knew that their words carried poison and knives.

  "My friend is injured," the knight continued. "He is blind and helpless. Allow him to pass over the drawbridge and into the bailey. Whatever quarrels you have with our country, our lord, and our Order, you and I can settle here on the plains, in full sight of my countrymen."

  "Damn your country! Your lord and your Order be damned!" Verminaard roared, whirling the mace above his head until a dark spiral formed in the morning air, widening and widening until it covered the horses and riders, veiling the view of the garrison on the bailey walls like a thick, gloomy cloud. "As I see it, you've no grounds to bargain. Your companion stays where he is."

  "So be it," the knight replied tersely. "Before these walls an
d the men assembled there, I say that you are a base, ignoble coward, and should the gods grant me the power to defeat you, you will be shown no mercy."

  Verminaard sneered. "Oh, but I'll show mercy to you, Sir Knight. I shall prolong your miserable time of breath

  until the lord of the castle himself begs that I finish the job."

  "Villain!" someone shouted from the castle walls, and from farther away, the shout was answered by another, the words indistinguishable, muffled by distance.

  The raised hand of the knight stilled further outcry. "The lord of the castle begs to no brigand. If it must come again to sword and mace, then let it come, by Paladine and by Huma!"

  "And let it come on foot," Verminaard declared, dismounting in a rustle of robes and a creak of black leather armor. "For I yearn to face you man to man and arm to arm, so that none will credit my victory to the stallion beneath me, nor your defeat to poor horse-mastery."

  The knight dismounted as well, removing his shield from the back of the saddle and uncovering it so that the risen sun danced fitfully on the embossed white lance and black dragon that adorned its polished center.

  Nightbringer shivered and hummed in Verminaard's hand.

  Do not spare him, the Voice murmured with a new, frenzied urgency. Oh, do not spare him, Lord Verminaard, for he is the worst of our enemies and the fount of our suffering. Because of his line, we lie in darkness, and at the end of his descendants, we will breathe again!

  "He will not be spared," Verminaard muttered, "for he stands between me and the lord of the castle."

  As he approached the veiled knight, Verminaard knew that he faced the strongest fighter yet.

  The man dropped into a swordsman's crouch, sidling gracefully to high ground, away from his wounded companion. Verminard lumbered after him, noisy and awkward afoot, but confident in his strength and his weapon and in the mysterious power that ran through the pulsing mace.

  Their paths met on a little rise not fifty yards from the

  castle bridge. There, under the sight of Laca's archers, they circled each other twice and closed for the first attack.

  The knight struck first, his saber switching and flashing like the tail of a snake. A quick backhand slash brought the blade across Verminaard's chest, furrowing effortlessly through the leather armor. Had the larger man not stepped back quickly, he would have been slain before the fight had really begun.

  Backing away, gasping, Verminaard staggered down the rise, the knight in calm, relentless pursuit. The blade whistled by his ear once, twice, and he could barely stifle a whimper as he blocked a thrust with the handle of Nightbringer.

  It was then, at the bottom of the rise, that sword locked with mace, steel with ancient stone. The knight pushed against Verminaard, his mailed face only inches from Verminaard's own, so that the young man could see the color of his enemy's eyes.

  Blue. Pale blue like his own. Like Aglaca's.

  Something in those eyes softened. Verminaard dug his heels in the dry, cracked earth and pushed, and the knight tumbled backward, landing with a rough clatter on the hard ground.

  He was back to his feet at once, but the tide of the battle had changed. Verminaard knew now that he was stronger than the man before him, that for this time, at least, the quickness and skill of Solamnic swordsmanship fell short against the sheer brute power of muscle and rock.

  With a jubilant shout, Verminaard brought the mace shrieking down at his pressed opponent, who scrambled free of the blow at the cost of a shattered shield. Reeling, his left arm limp and useless, the swordsman backed from the violet darkness and staggered up the rise once more, seeking the vantage of higher ground.

  Now! the Voice urged again as the spiked head of

  Nightbringer swirled, its stone surface roiling like black lava. He's yours if you strike now!

  "Who are you?" the wounded knight rasped, weaving from pain and exertion.

  Don't tell… don't tell. He will entangle you in honor___

  "Verminaard of Nidus," the young man announced proudly. "I have come far to meet the lord of this castle and demand from him what is rightly mine."

  The knight dropped his sword and fell to his knees. With his one good arm, he removed the helm and aven-tail. His blond hair was streaked with first gray, but his eyes were brilliant and young, as resolute as they had appeared nine years ago across the Bridge of Dreed.

  Verminaard gasped. It was his own face, thirty years older.

  "You!" he cried. "Laca Dragonbane!"

  The man met his stare serenely. "What would you have from the lord of the castle, Verminaard of Nidus?"

  Verminaard took a tentative step toward his blood father, then another. Laca rose slowly to his feet, turned his back on the approaching warrior, and walked calmly, almost casually to the side of the wounded knight.

  "I would have the castle." Verminaard replied. "I would have the rest of my inheritance, Laca. And I would have vengeance on you for your years of silence, for my years of suffering at the hand of Daeghrefn for your deed."

  Laca knelt silently by the blinded man, cradling the fellow's head in his lean, long-fingered hands. He glared up at the monstrous young man before him and spoke to him coldly, as though across a great chasm.

  "You're a creature apart now, Verminaard of Nidus," he pronounced. "And you have made your choices." He lifted the helm from the face of the injured man. The clouded eyes rolled back in the head of the hapless man, who lay stunned and moaning in Laca's arms.

  "Abelaard!" Verminaard roared. "No! No!"

  The wounded man blinked pathetically at the sound of the voice, raising his bruised arm vaguely.

  "No!" Verminaard shouted again, and fell to his knees, Nightbringer black and glittering in his hand.

  He would strike something. Rock and wind … Laca … himself. He would end everything, here at the borders of Estwilde, and there would be nothing but night, and night upon night….

  And a darkness rushed over him, and he saw and remembered nothing.

  Laca watched the young man vanish in a swirl of black, engulfing fire. Clouds broke over the landscape, and for the first time in hours, sunlight spread over the bailey walls of Castle East Borders. Wearily the Lord of East Borders took the reins of the shivering Orlog and led the stallion back toward the injured Abelaard.

  "Who . . . who was it, Uncle Laca?" the young man asked, rubbing his vacant and useless eyes.

  "I don't know," Laca replied.

  In the Khalkist Mountains, overlooking the Nerakan plains, overlooking Nidus and the razed forest to its south, Verminaard received a new and stern discipline at the hands of nature.

  He awoke in a sunlit grotto high above Castle Nidus. The shriek of a raptor wakened him, and he sprawled blearily, painfully on the stone floor of the little cavern, breathing in the moist air, the odor of guano and mildew,

  and a dark, alien stench that underlay all these-something profound and fierce and reptilian.

  He could not figure how he had come there, but he knew he was far from East Borders and close to home.

  Nightbringer lay beside him, glowing with a cold, ebony fire. He shuddered at the memory of those flames on his arm, of the black oblivion, and most of all at the prospect of wielding the weapon again.

  "No more," he whispered, his voice as dry and desolate as the vanished plains of Estwilde. "I shall bear you no more, fight no more."

  And yet as he said the words, his hand reached for the handle of the mace and closed about it.

  He did not know how he had come to that spot. He had knelt in Estwilde, raging and mourning, and the darkness had swept him away. And now he was miles from the fields of East Borders, where he could see the smoke rising from the hearth fires of his childhood home.

  Though Nidus was in full view below him, it was a week before he considered returning there. He stayed in the grotto, in its deepest recesses, faring to the mouth of the cavern only at night, and then only when the hunger became overwhelming. Though the sun would no
t harm him, daylight was strange to him now-alien and unnerving, like darkness to a child.

  Far better to stay in the dark awhile, he told himself as the red moon passed sullenly overhead on his second night in the cave. Better to abide here and mend and recover strength.

  He ate what bitter roots he could forage from the spare highland terrain: knol and dioscor and the foul-tasting purple betys-chastise root, old Speratus had called it. And by night, the brown madfall beetles were sluggish and unaware. Their flesh was cold and slippery, but it was nutrient enough as long as he did not eat the poisonous tail.