Michael Williams - Before the Mask

Verminaard glared at the young Solamnic. Preening for the girl, he was, and charming her with his glib, western airs.

Sullenly he stepped aside. The time would come when strength would avail. Then those lavender eyes would turn to him, and the story would be different.

There was something about the campsite, a smell of flowers and aeterna and some strange and exotic attar that hinted at a deep, cryptic wisdom. Verminaard fidgeted, shifting from foot to foot as he stood watch, and Aglaca kindled the fire with a quiet, almost secretive reverence. Only Judyth seemed unaffected, merrily mixing an herb tea made from some nearby berries and leaves. "A bracer," she claimed, "after a long journey." All the while, and even as she cleaned and stitched Verminaard's wounded shoulder, she continued to regale Aglaca with quiet stories of fabled Palanthas-of the High Clerist's Tower, of the Tower of High Sorcery, and the winding streets that linked district after district of Solamnia's aristocracy as the thin spirals of a spider's web link its anchoring spokes and radials.

"I wouldn't want to go west," Verminaard offered, rubbing at his newly stitched shoulder despite Judyth's advice, as the darkness deepened. "Too much pomp and Solamnic ceremony."

"You lie. It's because Daeghrefn no longer believes in the Order," Aglaca declared flatly.

"And what of that?" Verminaard asked defensively, turning toward his companion, who knelt by Judyth as the tea steeped, their faces radiant, bathed in the last rays of the westering sun.

"Nothing, Verminaard. Sorry. It's been a long time, and I'm missing the Order a bit myself… and my father, and home on the East Borders."

"Well, gather yourself, Aglaca," Verminaard said coldly. "You're not the first to be exiled, you know. And all this talk of Solamnia and Palanthas and Oath and Measure is more than annoying after a while."

"Then don't listen," Judyth declared calmly, smiling, her gaze fastened defiantly on this big, boorish blond oaf who seemed to rankle at the joy of others. "Simply stand there and look out for ogres."

Flushed and silent, Verminaard backed away. Then he turned with a contemptuous smile, intent again on a man's business. He would stand watch. They were not fit for it.

It was then he began to hear Solamnic.

"Est othas calathansas bara…" Judyth began, and off raced a new and alien conversation, the pair of Solamnics by the fire masked in the old language, its liquid sounds and its musical, sudden vowels. Judyth's stifled laughter rang in the outpouring of words, and Aglaca, delighted to hear once again the sounds of his home, of the Order, of his father's tongue, laughed with her. It was the happiest he had been in nearly ten years.

Verminaard tried to listen, and recognized a word now and then. But it felt as if the fog had returned, as if his senses were muffled and shut. From the time when Daeghrefn had left the Solamnic Order, that language had been forbidden in Castle Nidus, and the few simple verbs he had learned from Aglaca's attendants and from a rare Solamnic emissary served him ill in the swift conversation.

It was all he could take. Muttering, he stuffed his belongings in the saddlebag-the Amarach runes, the quith-pa, the purple pendant-and took off on foot toward high ground.

Let them band together to shut him out, in the affected, gossipy fashion of courtier or knave. He had better things to do! Adventures to seek on the harsh Nerakan plains, where a stout arm availed more than some urbane knowledge of manners and far-flung places and pretty words!

There were better women elsewhere-more agreeable and compliant.

He could scarcely believe it when he looked back and saw how far he was from the camp. The little canyon below shielded them from the plains in the rising Ner-akan night. The sun was well gone and the afterglow fading fast. He had traveled a good two hundred feet or so up the sheer mountain trail, amid scrubby aeterna and the little deciduous plants the mountain folk called broucherei…

"Damn it!" he exclaimed. "They have me studying foliage now!" His gaze shot up the rock face to a plateau, void of the lush, surrounding vegetation, where four drasil trees stood in a circle, stark and black against the last of the light, like a sign from the gods.

"There's the entrance," Verminaard said to himself, stooping to enter the mouth of the cave. A quartet of bats flashed by his ears, chattering, and he shivered as one touched his face.

He had made up his mind when he recognized the trees and finally remembered that they always grew above caverns. He would go into the cave-go there alone-and find his way past the thick arrangement of roots and tendrils, exploring the dark as far as his courage would take him.

"Which is much farther than Aglaca would go," he muttered, and he crouched in the palpable gloom, moving slowly into the depths of the cave.

It wasn't long before the Voice reached him, familiar and embracing, as it had always been, but there was something new in its suggestion, some haunting note of urgency that Verminaard had never heard before. For the first time, he paused and wondered whether he should go on.

Enough of the day, the low, feminine voice intoned, almost singing, as Verminaard caught his breath and sank to his knees, leaning against the moist wall of the cavern. Enough of the treachery of sun, the little deceits of the stars in their courses. Leave them behind, Prince Verminaard, lord of a thousand leagues and the scion of dragons…

Undefined shapes flitted through the shadows ahead, spectral, robed figures mingling with the darkness, their voices mixing with the low insect drone of sound he had first heard in the depths of the Nerakan caverns, a sound like the high-pitched humming from the ruins about God-shome. He stood, his knees shaking, and breathed a prayer to Hiddukel, to Zeboim, to Takhisis.

And at the finish of the third prayer, it was as though the Lady herself had reached forth and embraced him. In the warm darkness, he traveled deeper into the cave, past the insubstantial shapes.

He gathered strength and courage with each stride.

One voice rose above all the babble, the bewitching Voice of his childhood, of a thousand thoughts that had passed through his beleaguered mind. In voluptuous darkness lies the truth, it urged, and then, as the cloaked shapes wavered and danced at the edge of Verminaard's sight, the urging intensified, growing more rhythmic, more melodious, until the cavern echoed with a cold and melancholy song.

Set aside the buried light Of candle, torch, and rotting wood, And listen to the turn of night Caught in your rising blood.

How quiet is the midnight, love, How warm the winds where ravens fly, Where all the changing moonlight, love, Pales in your fading eye.

How loud your heart is calling, love, How close the darkness at your breast, ~ How hectic are the rivers, love, Drawn through your dying wrist.

And, love, what heat your frail skin hides, As pure as salt, as sweet as death, And in the dark the red moon rides The foxfire of your breath.

He followed the song in a daze, as newly visible stalactites strangely dripped and melted around him and the cavern rippled and eddied like the heart of a whirlpool. Voices called to him from the center of the walls; pale hands seemed to reach from the stone, grasping at his tunic, his hair, coldly fingering the wound in his arm until his hand tingled, his fingers numbed about the hilt of his drawn sword. Before him, the shadows twitched and cavorted, chittering like bats, and time and again bright shocks of color flashed behind them in the darkness-pale purple, deep red, occasional green.

Then all shadow and the odd light descended to a single slim corridor, a green-white sickly glow emanating from it like a dying phosfire, like the damaged soul of a marshland. Verminaard followed mindlessly, shuffling in the dried clay of the corridor, the trail behind him a fading stream of light.