Before the Mask

by Michael Williams

  Once he stood at the edge of a precipice, bathed eerily

  in the red glow of Lunitari, and tried to drop Nightbringer into the obscure and rocky darkness. It seemed fitting, as though dropping it into the darkness would make retrieval impossible if he was weak and returned for the mace. But the weapon fastened itself to his hand, glowing and droning, twisting like some monstrous black leech, and he told himself, Not yet. I can rid myself of it anytime, once my strength is returned. But not yet.

  Yet he mistrusted his own thoughts, and so he tried once more. A shadowy pool lay in the nethermost reach of the cavern, so far from light that only the green glow of the vespertile bats lightened its black waters. The madfall beetles who dwelt by its banks had evolved for generations in the near-total darkness, eyeless now, their shells a pale, translucent pink. It seemed like the spot to leave Nightbringer, and for a moment, his heart leaped. There would be rest from all of this-from hunger and cold and from the consuming presence of the mace. He would find peace in the depths of this darkness.

  But though Verminaard plunged his hand in the icy water and tried to release the weapon into the calm, deep pool, still the mace adhered to the skin of his hand. It glowed beneath the water, if glowed was the word, a deep, velvety blackness within the abject shadows of the pool.

  He tried more drastic methods after that, but fire failed to damage the weapon, and his own paltry spellcraft was powerless against it. It could not be lost, nor could it be destroyed, it seemed, but the deeper truth came to him as the fruitless days passed.

  It was a week before he admitted that he could not deliver himself from Nightbringer because he would not be delivered.

  But by then he had other concerns, other callings. For Castle Nidus was drawing him as well, and he knew his long night of solitude was almost over. Soon the gates of the castle would open for him, and he would enter as a

  man utterly changed, brought into total compliance with the Lady's will.

  He was the Arm of Takhisis, her champion in the black and flowing light.

  Verminaard had found the drus berries earlier that morning. Crushed into a potion, they were the stuff of visionaries, carried in flasks by shaman and druid, by the scattered dark clerics of the Dragon Queen. Growing in the wild, untempered by waters or the alchemist's art, the raw berries offered wilder, more erratic visions. Sometimes more profound.

  Or so Cerestes had told him in the long, magical studies of his childhood.

  Now, following a long afternoon's meditation at the edge of the daylight, he ate a handful of the violet berries and crept back into the grotto. There he crouched on his massive haunches and waited for the visions and auguries to begin.

  He drew forth the rune stones. He would know what She willed. The runes would tell him.

  In the days of his solitude, the stones had been as constant a companion as Nightbringer. He felt their strong assurance in the pouch at his belt, and in the day, when he longed for the darkness and the serenity it brought, he would retire into the depths of the cave. There, in the protective shadows, he would clutch the stones like totems. But he had not cast them, had not even looked at them.

  But now it was different. Now, in the red moonlight, where their edges glimmered like veins of gold, he called on the Amarach to bode and prophesy.

  "Say me the truth, stones," he whispered. "No matter the laughter of soldiers, the scorn of the mages." Closing

  his eyes, he breathed a brief prayer to the Seven Dark Gods, to the Lady, and to the spirit of the runes, and cast three stones before him.

  "That which was," he muttered. "That which is. That which is yet to be."

  He opened his eyes and gaped in astonishment.

  Blank. Blank. Blank. The same rune in all three positions.

  Verminaard rubbed his eyes and looked again. He had not imagined it. The stark nothingness of the blank rune stared at him from past, present, and future.

  "Blank," he muttered. "The absence of dark and light."

  But there was only one blank rune in the set of stones! How could …

  Quickly he rummaged through the discarded runes. Blank … blank … blank. The smooth face of each stone stared at him mockingly.

  That night, in the rubble below the cavern, Verminaard danced beneath the full red moon, his tattered black robes brilliant in a bloody light.

  The effect of the drus would not wear off until the next morning, and so the young man had set aside the runes and offered worship to the shapes of the dark gods in the stars overhead. He held up the mace to the tilting constellations, and he called for the old powers to course through the weapon and into his willing blood.

  Let the covenant be renewed, he told himself, as it was in the cave of the Lady, when I took this mace. Then tomorrow night I shall return to Nidus. Aglaca and I have business to contract. For Lunitari is full, and he will be my general. Or I shall take the girl and destroy them both.

  Verminaard blinked drunkenly and watched the stars pass over.

  Hiddukel the Scales tilted angrily overhead, a memory of the old injustices, of the betrayals that had brought him to Nidus in infancy and his cold, neglected boyhood. Chemosh of the Yellow Robes brought the dead from the plains and the mountains, and Verminaard exulted at the battered ogres who trooped before his sight, at the knights, clad still in their dented and bloodied armor, who stared at him with milky, vacant eyes.

  He laughed as well at the Hood of Morgion, the great mask of disease and decay, for he knew firsthand the deception of masks, and the eyes of his brother Abelaard were blind and vacant as well.

  He exulted in the terrible red condor, Sargonnas of the Fires, and he remembered the fires in the forest and on the plains south of Nidus.

  But finally the queen emerged in the black sky-the Lady of the Dragons, She of the Many Faces. He knelt and adored her, the black mace quivering in his hand, pulsing and burning. And in her presence, Verminaard of Nidus rose and began to dance.

  Or perhaps Nightbringer drew him to his feet and turned him in a quickening spiral, there amid the black rubble and the burned country and the mouth of the grotto. He did not know whether his thoughts or those of the weapon ruled his body and heart.

  But in the swirling moonlight, there on the hills that someday men would call the Dragon's Overlook, the Voice spoke again to him out of the heart of the mace.

  Dance, my love, it urged him. Dance, my Lord Verminaard, ruler of armies … my love.

  Chapter 19

  From the top of the tower, he could see the faces of thec gods.

  Daeghrefn knew that they all were watching-twenty sets of eyes in the blackness of the firmament, all eternally fixed upon this castle, this tower, this circle of candle and torch.

  How foolish he had been not to believe in them!

  For they sang in the stars and rustled in the stones of the tower. And none of them forgave him, for Verminaard had told them terrible things.

  Daeghrefn had coveredthe mirror in his chambers, draping the polished glass with black cloth, as though the castle were in mourning. It was a precaution, he told himself. He had set the mirror by the window years a" go, to

  illumine the bare interiors of his bedroom with reflected moonlight, but his invention had now turned dangerous. Now the gods could watch him in it, mark his reflection always in the mirror as he passed by, and his presence anywhere in the deep interiors of the tower.

  Daeghrefn shivered and looked over the pass at Eira Goch, west into the black face of the Khalkists. Estwilde was miles away, on the other side of the range-or so his men insisted. But Daeghrefn knew otherwise. At night, when the black moon shone on the slopes of the mountains, the entire country crept eastward, its boundaries swelling over Jelek, over the forgotten ruins of Gods-home. …

  The dry steppes of Estwilde were moving at night, and Laca was at the head of the armies-pale-eyed Laca, traitor for these twenty years.

  Laca was not content to steal sons. He would steal Abe-laard's inheritance as well.r />
  Daeghrefn leaned against the tower walls, turning south now toward the fire-blackened forest. Holding aloft a sputtering torch, he peered into the shadowy, moonlit wasteland. There would be no aid from that direction, nor from beyond. What help could he expect from a band of Nerakans he had fought for nine years? Their leader-a cutthroat named Hugin-had vowed to "skewer the Stormcrow on a pike and carry him like a flapping standard through his own gates."

  He had overheard that vow in a dream. So it had to be true. And Verminaard planned to join with the bandits.

  Daeghrefn covered his ears. The incessant whine from the mountains-shrill and maddening, like a choir of gnats-had begun again. The gods were mocking him, he was sure. Soon Nidus would be alone on the plains of Neraka, crushed between two armies and sapped from within by an ungrateful boy.

  There was no escape to the north, where Gargath lay,

  sacred to the dwarves and gnomes. He would find no refuge among the worshipers of Reorx, for none of the gods forgave him.

  But there was always the east. The high peaks of Berkanth and Minith Luc, and beyond a high green plain, no doubt untouched by the ogres' fire, where a man could lose himself for years, could vanish until the gods themselves could not find him. He looked hopefully toward the eastern foothills, where Solinari was on the rise in the autumn sky.

  Someone was dancing on the rocky cliffs above the castle, framed by the silver light of the moon. He held something aloft-something glittering and black.

  Daeghrefn leaned over the parapet, craning for a better look. For a moment, he thought it was Kiri-Jolith himself, the ancient god of battles, or perhaps black Nuitari rising out of the silver heart of his sister.

  Then he saw that the figure held up a mace, and he knew who it was, dancing alone in the eastern mountains. "Verminaard!" he spat. "May the Dark Seven devour you!"

  Frightened, fascinated, Daeghrefn leaned out even farther, until the bailey seemed to spin below him. He strained beyond the torchlight into the chilling dark, and he watched as the shadow rose to cover the moon, to block out the light with its black, leathery wings….

  Then he remembered the druidess's prophecy: This child will eclipse your own darkness.

  And the moon was engulfed in Verminaard's shadow. Alone on the parapet, awash in the thin light of torches and candles, the Lord of Nidus shrank against the stone walls, his hands shaking. In the firelight, he cast no shadow, and it occurred to him that his shadow would not return, that he had no substance left to summon it.

  I am becoming transparent, he thought, a wild laugh rising to his lips. Transparent, like madfall beetles in the

  cavern depths. He held up his hands, examining them closely. They were blue and cadaverous, blanching as he watched.

  Daeghrefn staggered into his chambers, crying aloud as he jostled the mirror. He wheeled, tore the cloth from the glass, and glared at his own reflection.

  His hair was straw-pale, and his eyes were light blue- the color of vacant skies.

  "It is my pleasure to come at the bidding of the Lord of Nidus," Judyth began formally, and" the haunted eyes pivoted toward her. "And to offer him tonic and balm for his malady."

  "Then Verminaard sent you? And you treat with him? For he is the Lord of Nidus. Or so they are all saying."

  Judyth did not answer. Nervously she fingered the pendant at her throat.

  Daeghrefn cleared his throat and rose painfully from his chair. He was hooded, and he shied away from the light as he spoke. Judyth felt as if she were talking to a wraith, to a walking dead man.

  "You're with Verminaard often," Daeghrefn said. "You were there at his birth."

  "Sir?" Judyth asked, immediately confused. But she answered cautiously, "I see him little of late."

  That much was true. Twice she had seen Verminaard from the window of Aglaca's quarters as he paced over the battlements in the moonlight-a cloaked shadow gripping that black, infernal mace. He kept his distance now, Aglaca said-from the castle garrison, from the soldiers, from all his old companions-and Judyth had begun to wonder if the hew Lord of Nidus wasn't as mad as the old one who stood before her, muttering of

  fire and snow and conspiracy.

  "Even so," Daeghrefn replied oddly, as though he had read her thoughts. He turned toward the fire and braced himself against the back of the chair, which creaked and teetered beneath him. "What does he want, druidess?" "1… I don't understand, sir. And my name is Judyth." "It's a simple question, really. What does Verminaard

  want?"

  Judyth shifted uncomfortably on her stool. "I don't

  know, sir."

  "Are you with him?"

  "I beg your pardon?" Daeghrefn's questions were vague and needling. Judyth felt suddenly hot and itchy, as though she were dressed in wool under high summer

  sunlight.

  "Are you part of the mutiny, damn it!"

  He was much too loud. The voices in the hallway stopped abruptly, and Judyth imagined the soldiers who had escorted her to Daeghrefn's chambers now crouched at the door outside, listening as their commander further

  unraveled.

  "No, sir. I would not conspire against you."

  "So there is a conspiracy. I knew it! What have you

  heard, then?"

  I must leave his presence, Judyth thought. I must get word to the west, regardless of soldiers and mages and dragons. Nidus is fast becoming a madhouse.

  She started to stand, but Daeghrefn's menacing stare fixed her to her seat. He slipped into the shadows, crouching behind a statue of great Zivilyn, a spreading vallen-wood carved from veined marble.

  "I have heard little, sir," Judyth replied uneasily. "Bits and snatches, but no more than that. Actually, I'm not certain. I have only just met him."

  "You met him on a snowy night twenty years ago, in a cave south of here. Do not lie to me. And you said then,

  druidess, you said then, that his darkness would eclipse my own. Look upon your curse, woman!" He emerged from behind the marble tree, and he threw back his hood.

  Judith quietly gazed upon the dark skin, though somewhat paler for his confinement in the tower, the dark hair, and the wild, dark eyes.

  "Don't you see what he's done?" Daeghrefn insisted. "What you've done? I should have killed you both that night. Had it not been for Abelaard …"

  Daeghrefn snorted and turned back toward the fire. Quietly, after a long, uncomfortable silence, Judyth rose.

  "I shall be leaving now, sir. That is, if you have no more questions."

  "You know much more than you are saying," the Lord of Nidus declared calmly, solemnly. "Do you remember how cold it was?"

  " 'How cold', sir?"

  "The night of his birth. In the mountains south of here. Before the fire."

  Judith glanced nervously toward the door. Daeghrefn was shifting from time to time, place to place. For a brief, nightmarish moment, Judyth lost sight of him in the shadows. Then suddenly he was standing before the little chapel altar, a candle in his hand. His eyes gleamed brilliantly, like twin flames.

  "Oh, I know who you are. This innocence and Lord Daeghrefn, sir serves you ill, druidess. I thought you were long dead, but, no, Robert failed me. He was worthless, and it is good that I left him on the plains. Though perhaps you fooled him as well. I know that your kind can change shape, altering like the seasons or like clouds in the summer sky, though I recognized you at once by the pendant around your neck."

  "I still do not understand, sir." Judyth covered the purple stone at her throat.

  "The old stories are right," Daeghrefn pronounced,

  turning to face the altar. "The druids do steal babies."

  "Steal babies, sir?"

  "They take the promised son, the second child whose birth you await with joy for seven long months, and in its stead they leave … a night-grown changeling." He laughed bitterly.

  "I do not-"

  "So you have said!" Daeghrefn roared. Then softly, almost wonderingly, he continued. "I saw him dancing
last night in the eastern hills, where the little copse of evergreen … where, on the night of the fire …"

  He fell silent. Judyth cleared her throat and waited for words that did not come as a minute passed, then another. Finally she backed from the room, leaving the Lord of Nidus staring into the fire.

  As he looked at the flickering flames, Daeghrefn remembered another fire, another burning. Suddenly, as though the Abyss had opened to receive him, his thoughts were consumed again with a vision of dark, spreading wings.

  Two figures walked the walls of Castle Nidus that night.