Michael Williams - Before the Mask

"I've never seen anything of this sort," Aglaca marveled. "The stockade is a living thing."

Verminaard gave the stockade a second look.

Sure enough, the Pen was alive and growing-a tight circle of small-boled trees, so close together that a mouse could barely pass between the trunks. Their branches spread and intertwined, forming a netted canopy that kept out the rain, no doubt, and most of the sunlight. Near the Pen's narrow entrance, the sentries paced, and the air seemed to bristle and crackle before them.

Aglaca smiled. "It's easier than I thought."

Verminaard shot him a puzzled look.

"Those are drasil trees," the young Solamnic explained. "Remember the ones above the cave in the mountains?"

Verminaard did not.

With a sigh, Aglaca continued, leaning back into the darkness. "Once again, they grow over caves. That's the point. This whole area must sit atop a cavern-perhaps a system of caverns. When we find an entrance, it will be simple. We'll come up under the Pen and burrow her out."

"Won't that be hard to do? To break through all that cavern rock?" Verminaard still did not understand.

"The trees have already done that for us," Aglaca replied delightedly. "The system of roots has broken it to gravelly soil, I'd wager. The two of us, at work for a couple of hours with sword and knife, could hack a hole big enough to draw out the girl-to draw out her entourage, if need be. Then it's back to where we left the horses, and on to Nidus before the Nerakans know they've been… undermined."

The caves were easy enough to find.

And Aglaca was right: The whole plateau was riddled with tunnels and fissures. The tunnels branched and burgeoned, forming an intricate network that spread roughly westward, toward the Nerakan walls, the center of town, and the temple itself.

Aglaca led the way. It seemed that he had a dwarf's underground sense, weaving through the dark, perplexing tunnel system, his hands extended before him. Rejecting blind passages almost by instinct, he would feel at an opening, shake his head and pass by.

Deep within the tunnels, Aglaca withdrew a tinderbox and a small lamp from a pouch at his belt. Crouching quietly and suddenly, so that Verminaard almost stumbled over him in the gloom, the Solamnic youth lit the lamp deftly and held it aloft.

The darkness dispelled a little. Amid confusion and discord, rubble and guano, strange, translucent crickets whirred and stalked blindly over the glistening stone walls and the ancient cobwebbed beams that supported the tunnels ahead.

"I had no idea they were…" Verminaard began. But the depth and extent of the caverns baffled him.

Another sound, high and melodious, filtered to the young men like a chorus of a thousand distant voices, the harmonies so intricate that the music itself teetered on the edge of chaos. Beautiful though it was, the sound was distracting, and Verminaard shielded his ears.

"What is it?" he whispered, but Aglaca only shook his head.

"You should know. It's the sound of spellcraft," the smaller youth explained. "Something surrounds the Pen-a shell of energy or light. Since we can't pass around it or through it, we're on our way under it and up to the girl."

"How do you know, Aglaca?" Verminaard slipped narrowly through a latticework of thick roots. "You don't listen when it comes to magic."

"I don't listen to Cerestes," Aglaca corrected mysteriously and handed the lamp to his companion.

Though he was thoroughly lost by now, turned about in the tunnels, and though each passage was indistinguishable from the last, Verminaard could tell that, slowly but directly, Aglaca was guiding them somewhere. Resentfully he held the lamp aloft, giving the smaller lad the light to see by.

The rescue had been Verminaard's idea, after all, planned over runes and misgivings in the dark nights of Castle Nidus, and now this interloper-this hostage-had seized command with his cleverness and know-how.

I am no oracle, he thought. And yet I see the lay of this tunnel-how this venture will be reported to the ears of those at home, and who will receive the glory for the rescue.

He glared at Aglaca, who bent down a tunnel, nodded, and motioned to Verminaard excitedly, urgently.

"Here it is!" he whispered. His blue eyes caught for a moment in the torchlight, flickering a bright, unexplain-able red. "Drasil roots. Looks to be a circle of 'em, like a ring of mushrooms. We're directly under the Pen, I'll wager. It's all digging and a straight climb from here, Verminaard. Set the lamp where it gives the most light."

Verminaard's enmity vanished with the news. Thoughts of the girl returned like a fresh wind in the damp and musty cavern. Verminaard wedged the lamp into a crack in the tunnel wall, split by one of the drasil roots in its blind plummet through both ceiling and floor of the cave. Taking up his sword, he sprang compliantly to Aglaca's side, ready to hack and dig and fight anything that stood between him and the captured girl.

He was so close now to realizing his daydreams. She would be a beauty of unparalleled fairness. Verminaard had had his share of serving girls and milkmaids, but none of them would be like this creature. Her eyes would be pale blue stars and her silky hair the color of flax. She would know him immediately for the one who'd planned and propelled her rescue, and she would be forever grateful-so grateful that she would never wish to speak to another man. The way she would say his name would "Verminaard! I said you can start anytime! Where have you been?"

"You wouldn't understand. And don't get pushy with me."

It was only a matter of minutes before the roots knotted above them, as thick as cords, as fingers, tendrils snagging their weapons, dulling them in a maddening, fibrous web. Verminaard thrashed vainly at the snarl of root and dirt and rock that seemed to open for him and engulf him as he climbed past the more slender roots to ankle-thick, leg-thick monstrosities that broke through the rock above and below, searching blindly for air and water and sustenance.

Slowly the network of roots surrounded them. It seemed like an underground stockade, a mirror image of the Pen that stood directly above.

"We could work like loggers for a week down here," Aglaca muttered, "and still be no closer to squeezing those shoulders of yours through this tangle."

Verminaard gasped for breath and wiped his dirty brow. Between the dust and his exertion, the air in the cavern was slowly becoming unbreathable.

"We'll go back to the surface. Fight our way in," said Verminaard, moving back the way he'd come.

"Nonsense," Aglaca replied. "You saw their numbers. And there are ogres as well-I could smell them through the fog. I'll bet they're penned up nearby, no doubt enchanted into service to build the wall around the temple. Prisoners or not, they'll fight for the bandits rather than help us out. No, between the brigands and their servants, this is still the best of entries."

Verminaard winced and twisted his foot out of a long tendril.

Aglaca grinned slyly. "Listen. I spoke only of loggers," he said. "Not of burglars."

Verminaard scowled. He was doing it again. A plan was hatching in that ever so clever Solamnic brain- something complicated and intricate, no doubt, rife with twists and illusions, masks and double-talk. Sheathing his sword, his hands still numb from hacking at the roots, he sat on the cavern floor, awaiting a long explanation.

He was surprised at how simple it was.

But he did not like it one whit.

And his thoughts dwelt on the woman pent above them, and the charms and imagined deceits of Aglaca Dragonbane.

Hagalaz and Isa, two young bandit sentries, stood watch at the narrow opening to the Pen. It was no more than a small gap in the drasil trees, curtained of late by their courtly sergeant, who respected the captive's dignity and modesty.