Before the Mask

by Michael Williams

  On the southwest corner of the battlements, Aglaca kept a lonely vigil, watching the walls, the towers, and the bailey for a sign of his old companion. He had slipped his guards by the stables, but it was nothing new. A lazy pair, they would no doubt wait for him to return, knowing he was going nowhere without Judyth, without all his belongings, left in the room he had stayed in since he was twelve years old.

  Resting for a moment against the stone crenelations, the Solamnic youth gazed toward Eira Goch, veiled in a deep western darkness, and smiled as he remembered how he had pointed out the pass to Verminaard from

  their bedroom window ten years ago, on the night after the gebo-naud.

  Verminaard had known the name of the place and its history, but he could not locate it in the dark. Aglaca had given Verminaard the dagger then, and though the little weapon lay polished and well kept in the room upstairs, the promise of their friendship had suffered far worse over the years.

  It seemed somehow fitting. Fitting and circular. Aglaca would have to find the pass for Verminaard again- another kind of pass, through another kind of darkness.

  For the last three weeks, Verminaard had kept to himself. No one knew where he was quartered, nor had any in the garrison-from aged Graaf down to Tangaard and young Phillip-spoken with the new Lord of Nidus. All of them, however, had glimpsed him at twilight, walking these very battlements.

  Pacing in the moonlight. Clutching the mace.

  The men were afraid to approach him.

  Aglaca was not afraid, but he waited as well, as the dark form stalked the battlements. For Aglaca did not relish new meetings with Verminaard, nor the prospects of being asked again to become the new Marshal of Nidus, second-in-command of a bleak legion of bandits and mercenaries.

  No. His part of the story did not lie in war and conquest.

  That evening, standing on the cold battlements of Nidus, Aglaca had at last understood that the story he was in was not really his own. It was not an easy thing to admit, even for a gentle and generous soul such as Aglaca, but after he had spoken with the old man in the garden, it came to him quietly that his was only a small part in a great unfolding tale. While he had spent his time in Nidus, hostage in a pact of lesser nobles, large, ungovernable forces had wrestled and warred in the mountains,

  over the entire continent of Ansalon-throughout all Krynn, for that matter. At stake in their vast contest was history itself, for whichever side in the struggle emerged victorious, the world Aglaca had known would all be changed in a moment.

  He knew as well, and with a strange serenity and relief, that his role in the coming history, one way or another, would be over soon. Soon the songs that the old man had taught him would come of age. They were dangerous and volatile words, a god's magic to distract the mage and save his friend. After the magic was spent, Aglaca could never use it again. Then he would walk a path even more dangerous and volatile as Verminaard made a choice of his own.

  But Aglaca would try the spell and brave the danger to free Verminaard from his own gebo-naud with Night-bringer and the goddess who gave the weapon life.

  "So be it," Aglaca whispered, and a warm, unseasonable wind rose from the western slopes. "I am almost eager for it to begin."

  But where was the mage? And where was Verminaard?

  A strange shadow over his shoulder caused the young man to turn toward the western tower. There, atop the battlements, a cloaked figure stepped into the moonlight. He recognized the strides at once-the broad shoulders and the hair as fair as his own.

  Aglaca crouched at once, hiding in the shadows of the crenelations.

  At the moment the moonbeam touched his robes, Verminaard began to shimmer with an eerie black light. The robes seemed to expand, to double in on one another, folding and boiling like a distant stormy ocean. For a moment, his face seemed to lengthen, his skin to dapple and scale.

  Then, in a dizzying swirl of color and light, he became the mage Cerestes. He lifted his hands to the east, to the

  foothills above the castle, where the old copse of evergreens had risen before the fire.

  Aglaca shook his head. He had been watching the change with fascination, as a small defenseless animal watches the hypnotic nod and weave of the neidr snake. So the man he had seen on the battlements was not Verminaard at all but the dark mage in disguise.

  Then where was Verminaard?

  Low in the eastern sky, a black shadow crossed over the face of Lunitari. "The hollow moon," Cerestes said, his voice carrying eerily in the night air. The mage began to chant, his hands weaving gracefully, gesturing toward the foothills, toward a patch of darkness gliding there in the moonlight, moving swiftly toward the castle.

  Slipping along the shadows of the battlements, Aglaca drew nearer and nearer the black-clad mage. He stopped in astonishment at the tower walls as a new voice rose out of the chanting, low and feminine, familiar from the days of his childhood, when he had fought its soft insinuations.

  It was the Voice in the cave, the taunting voice of the goddess. Cerestes mouthed the words, but it was the Voice who spoke through him.

  And out on the foothills, the approaching darkness took solid form-the broad shoulders … the fair hair. Verminaard was approaching, and a dark magic was ready to meet him.

  Aglaca took a deep breath. Best to bind Cerestes now, while his thoughts were elsewhere and his energies linked to the dark and distant hill. Best do it quickly as well, for his own chant was a long one, one verse for each of the moons. He breathed a quick prayer to Paladine that the saying of these words would not consume him, for had not the old man spoken of their dangerous and volatile power?

  He was no enchanter. But for this one time, the words

  were his to speak.

  " 'By the lights of Paladine/ " he began,

  "And Solinari's silver glow,

  Let the words unite and bind

  Light above to light below;

  Let candle, torch, and lantern shine.

  By the lights of Paladine."

  Cerestes stood upright, his long meditation on the Lady- on the chants that would bind the returning Verminaard- brought to a sudden halt.

  The tips of his fingers burned, as they always did when the Light Gods threatened, and Cerestes knew the disturbance for what it was.

  Swiftly, urgently, he wheeled and sniffed the air, his heightened senses tasting the mustiness of the tower, the smoky, autumnal bailey, the sharp animal stench of the stables.

  Where was the chanter?

  His keen ears gathered the whir of a cricket near the seneschal's quarters, the call of an owl in the garden, something scuttling in the battlements of the western tower. Where? Where?

  Already his senses were fading, binding to human limits, the keen draconic eyesight dwindling into blurs of distant shadow as the far walls seemed to vanish before his straining gaze.

  Then, from the wall below, at last he heard the voice. He heard the second verse begin.

  "In Gilean's red and balanced light, Let light before match light behind,

  And Lunitari charge the night With shadows human and confined. Let eyes define the edge of sight In Gilean's red and balanced light."

  Something moved in the shadow of the western wall.

  Cerestes shielded his eyes and looked down, but the dark had encroached, and he could not see the chanter. His fingers burned horribly, and he rushed for the stairwell, cold panic propelling his steps onto the battlements.

  Quickly. Before the third verse.

  He teetered precariously on the narrow ramparts, stumbling and clutching the walls as he raced toward the chanter.

  He was too late. The verse had already begun.

  "Back into Nuitari's gloom,

  Let all rough magic now depart…"

  Cerestes breathed an old, evil incantation, and black fire settled in his hand. With a muted outcry, he hurled the fireball at the sound of the voice and staggered on when the chant continued …

  Aglaca felt the hot wind br
ush by his face, heard the wall shatter behind him. Still he continued, his memory holding the last words of the song, untouched by the heat and burning as a dark fire encircled him, rose, then suddenly began to fade.

  "Let centuries of night entomb

  The dark maneuverings of the heart…"

  The ramparts beneath him rumbled and shook. Aglaca leapt to the tower, clutching the mortared stone, scrambling up the face of the wall. The mage leaned over the battlement, and red fire flashed from his hands.

  Aglaca clutched the base of a tower window, and with a somersault that the druidess taught him in the garden, vaulted gracefully onto the sill. The fire rushed by him, and he leapt into the open room, an unoccupied guest chamber, and raced up the stairs to the roof of the tower.

  Aglaca opened the oaken door to the roof, and the stars swelled, and the cold air rushed over him. At the battlements, the mage wheeled about, his eyes flaming with rage, his hands raised for yet another spell.

  Remember the last lines, Aglaca told himself, rolling out of the way of a black bolt of lightning that shattered the door behind him. By all the gods, remember!

  And then the Voice came to him, one final time, soft and seductive and brimming with promises.

  It is all yours, Aglaca Dragonbane. Cease your chanting and release my servant, and it is all yours….

  The walls seemed to fall away, though Aglaca knew it was a vision. Before him lay a continent waiting, from Kern in the farthermost east, to Estwilde and Throt, to Solamnia and Coastlund, then west to Ergoth and San-crist, the island kingdoms….

  It is all yours, Lord Aglaca. All this power I shall give you, and the glory of it….

  Aglaca laughed. "I have heard it before," he muttered, "and it did not move me then. You cannot stop me!" Rebuffed by his laughter, the dark insinuations fled from his thoughts. His voice strong with faith and assurance now, Aglaca pronounced the song's end in the shrieking, pummeling darkness of Cerestes' futile spellcraft.

  "Let darkest magic flee, consumed By Nuitari's ravenous gloom."

  Cerestes panted before him on the battlements. The mage looked smaller in the moonlight, his handsome features drawn and wearied, his once-golden eyes as depth-less and dull as firebrick.

  "Do not gloat, Solamnic," he threatened, his voice strangely high, thin, void of resonance. "The dragon is confined within me, but I have not been idle in my human form. A formidable mage stands before you, and a thousand magicks wait at my bidding."

  "Try one of them," Aglaca urged. "Try your most powerful spell, Cerestes."

  The mage lifted his hajnd, ready to cast a fireball, and breathed the old incantation.

  Nothing happened.

  "You cannot do it," Aglaca replied calmly. ""Us as simple as that. Your magic has left you, sorcerer, and we stand here man to man."

  "But the one who approaches has power, Solamnic," Cerestes said. "You have not accounted for Verminaard, nor for the mace Nightbringer, which he holds like his own dark heart. You will lose, Aglaca. My spells may fail, my magic falter, but you will lose."

  "He will decide that," Aglaca said. "Verminaard will choose."

  "Oh, very good, Solamnic." The mage leered. "I would have it no other way. And we will not wait long."

  He pointed to the east, where Verminaard moved quickly from the moonlit foothills, trailing a swath of blackness behind him as he turned toward Castle Nidus.

  "I have no dragonsight," Cerestes hissed. "You have taken that from me as well. But it can be restored by Verminaard. Here he comes, riding the crest of the absolute night, and I can see far enough to know him."

  Chapter 20

  The man stalked across the eastern plains, and the first of the winter winds swept up from the south, bearing with it the smell of ash and corruption.

  It was Verminaard. That much was certain. Aglaca knew him at once by the broad shoulders, by the blond hair and the tattered black cloak. By the damned mace he still clutched tightly.

  He moved swiftly, feverishly, as though something pursued him. And behind him the wave of darkness spread and settled, and the eastern hills vanished into a complete and abject night.

  "Here he comes," Cerestes announced, pointing a long, bony finger at the approaching man. "Look behind him,

  Aglaca, and tell me this: How can such darkness bode aught but ill for you and for your kind?"

  Aglaca smiled. Toward the approaching figure he turned, and he began the second chant.

  "The light in the eastern skies Is still and always morning, It alters the renewing air Into belief and yearning…"

  With a bleating cry, Cerestes leapt toward the young Solamnic, who brushed him aside with a wave of a sinewy arm. The mage teetered at the edge of the ramparts, shrieked…

  And clutched at the crenels, his legs skidding out over the bailey before he tugged himself back to safety and crouched, rasping and whimpering, on the stone walk. Aglaca rushed at him, pinning him against the battlements with one muscled arm.

  Verminaard, approaching below, felt a great and ponderous weight lift from him. Suddenly, unexplainably, Nightbringer loosened in his hand. For a moment, thunderstruck, he gazed down at the weapon, then up to the battlements, where his eyes locked with Aglaca's, and he clutched the mace more tightly, more passionately.

  Suddenly he remembered the vision-years ago on the Bridge of Dreed, when he had stood and awaited Aglaca's crossing. Again he saw the blond youth on a windy battlement, a lithe, blue-eyed image of himself. But not me, he thought again. My brother . . . my image. Not Abelaard, but my brother.

  The young man gestured. His lips moved in a soundless incantation, and Verminaard felt weaker, felt his own power drain from him, then return as he found himself by the walls of Nidus. A dark force pushed him toward the battlements, and relentlessly, almost mechanically,

  Verminaard began to climb.

  Looking down into the transfigured face of his brother, Aglaca fumbled with the spell for a moment, the words slipping away in his astonishment. For Verminaard's countenance was sallow and gaunt, and a lost light flickered in the depths of his eyes. It seemed as though nothing lay beneath his skin except air and bone. And Verminaard's eyes …

  For an instant, Aglaca recalled their first hunt, the turning of the great beast in the box canyon, the dull look in the monster's eye, and he wondered why he was remembering this, why his mind played lazily over the past when the present rushed at him, armed and deadly.

  And his own vision, a decade ago on the bridge, returned to him . . . the pale, muscular young man, and the mace descending …

  So it will be, unless you take this matter in your own hands, Aglaca Dragonbane, coaxed the Voice, again low and seductive, neither man nor woman.

  " 'Even the night,' " Aglaca sputtered at last, closing his ears to the disembodied coaxing, his voice gaining confidence as he spoke the second verse of the chant:

  "Even the night must fail, For light sleeps in the eyes And dark becomes dark on dark Until the darkness dies …"

  Verminaard did not stop for an instant. Scrabbling up the wall like an enormous spider, buoyed by a dark, whirling cloud, he slung his leg over the merlon and hurdled onto the battlement, his fingers digging at the solid stone of the crenels as he clambered atop the walls and crouched, the mace clutched tightly in his hand.

  "Stop him, Verminaard!" Cerestes cried, fumbling in his

  sleeves and producing a long, narrow dagger. "Stop Aglaca before he enchants you with his Solamnic wizardry!" Aglaca slammed the mage into the wall. Dazed, Cerestes gasped for air.

  Verminaard stared coldly at Aglaca, waving the mace nervously, like the switching tail of a lion.

  Aglaca stood his ground, watching Cerestes out of the corner of his eye as the mage drew hesitantly nearer, the dagger rising and falling awkwardly in his delicate hand.

  "Stop him!" Cerestes spat, "or the chant will kill you!"

  Serenely Aglaca chanted the third of the four verses.

  "Soon the eye resolves Complexi
ties of night Into stillness, where the heart Falls into fabled light…"

  Color returned to Verminaard's skin, and he took a long breath. Was that lilac in the air? His arms were heavy, and suddenly he was very hungry.

  "What is your answer, my brother?" Verminaard asked. "Will you choose to be my captain, to serve me in the dignity and honor of our long acquaintance, our deepening friendship, or will you choose to leave the girl with me?"

  "If you let me finish, I'll be your captain."

  Uneasily Verminaard glanced down to the bailey, which seemed to pivot and rock below. For a moment, it seemed to rush up toward him with a blinding, insensible speed, and he thought he was falling.