Michael Williams - Before the Mask

Aglaca looked up and noticed that Verminaard had vanished.

Waving his hand, the Solamnic lad stilled Judyth's florid description of the purple clematis that scaled the western walls of Dargaard Keep.

"Verminaard!" he said, a low note of concern in his voice. Quickly he leapt from the fireside and raced toward the mouth of the little box canyon, where the plains spread before him ten miles to the darkened east.

No sign of him. Aglaca stared disconsolately across the low expanse to the black edge of the Nerakan Forest, where the torches of the ogres danced in the distance, moving steadily north and away.

They were safe from the monsters, but there was no sign of Verminaard. If he had stomped off in anger, he could be a mile away by now. A mile in any direction…

Aglaca brightened, wheeled suddenly, and raced toward the cliff side trail. Sure enough, there were footprints in the dust. He knelt, recognized the outline of Ver-minaard's enormous boot…

And started when Judyth's hand clasped him on the shoulder.

"If you're bent on finding him, don't go alone," she urged.

Aglaca smiled, but the smile faded when the tracks led into a cave-a low, bramble-covered burrow in the rock face, framed by hardy juniper and a blue mask of aeterna. Carefully, with Judyth still clutching his arm for balance, safety, and support, the lad leaned into the darkness, following the footprints until his sight failed and he lost them in a strange, pale green light.

"Judyth! Look here!" Aglaca urged. "What's this?"

"I don't know exactly," the girl declared. "Nor do I like my first sight of it."

"Nonetheless," Aglaca insisted, "Verminaard is nearly family-kind of like a brother. Well, exactly like a brother. And he's always doing things like this. I wouldn't blame you one whit for waiting right here. I'd do it, if I had a choice. But by my honor, I have to continue and see what's befallen him."

Gently the lad freed himself from Judyth's grip and stepped toward the heart of the cave. The girl followed him at once, and together they moved toward the odd, disturbing glow.

They had not traveled a dozen steps when a Voice rose out of the light, musical and seductive and venomous.

Not yet, it said. Wait… not yet.

"What's that?" Judyth asked. "Who is it?"

Aglaca shivered and tugged at her hand.

"Hurry," he whispered.

They found him at the enlarged end of the passage, at the source of the light.

Verminaard stood rapt before a green, glowing stalactite. The ancient stone formation shimmered, shifted, and boiled with a cold, morbid light, and before the astonished eyes of the trespassers, it assumed the shape of a mace, long and narrow, ending in a terrible spiked head that glowed like some unearthly gemstone.

When Aglaca and Judyth stepped into the final chamber and Verminaard wheeled to face them, the Voice spoke again instantly. It spoke as always, low and dangerous, rising melodically from some great depth in the earth, echoing from the moist and glittering walls of the cavern, but for the first time, it addressed both Verminaard and Aglaca at once.

From the Age of Light, I have chosen you both, it proclaimed, and Judyth, knowing the words were not for her, inched cautiously back toward the mouth of the cavern.

But she stopped when the Voice continued.

1 have known you since then, known you by the promise of your blood, by your blood's fulfillment in three thousand years of waiting in the darkness.

Aglaca frowned. It was prattle as usual, the same deceptive poetry he had ignored for a dozen years. And yet this time…

He glanced at Verminaard, who swayed again in a rapturous ecstasy before the glowing stone, his eyes half-lidded, an empty smile on his lips.

I have chosen you among thousands, the Voice continued, honeyed and insistent. You for your strength and physical courage, Lord Verminaard, and you, Lord Aglaca, for your inventiveness and grace.

The mace deepened in color and intensity of light until its green darkened to blood purple, to black, then to a color beyond black itself, until all that seemed to remain was its outline, its shadow against the dark of the cave walls a silhouette darker still.

And though both of you are worthy indeed… oh, indeed worthy, the Voice continued, and though I could offer both of you the lineaments of your fondest desire…

As the words tumbled forth from the light and embraced them, Aglaca saw the walls of Castle East Borders in the glowing head of the mace. For a moment, it seemed that the great eastern gate of the castle, in one corner of which he had carved his name when he first learned to write, was opening slowly, and someone, his craggy, thin face bathed in a pure and simple light, stood open-armed in the gateway.

Aglaca blinked. His eyes smarted, and for a moment, tears blurred his sight.

But Verminaard saw clearly, coldly, a different vision- a castle, its battlements ablaze, its towers crumbling. Above it, he flew on the back of… he could not tell what it was, but it was enormous, its broad shoulders thick and striated with powerful muscles. All around him, the sky was darkened by the sweep of black wings. The sunlight dimmed, and he knew that the destruction below him, the crushed and defenseless fortress, was the work of his own hand and heart and will, and he delighted in its fierce, magnificent ruin.

I ask for only one of you. Which of you has the courage to seize the night? the voice prodded, taunted.

Verminaard smiled triumphantly. He had seen enough. He looked over his shoulder at Aglaca, who stood protectively between Judyth and the glowing rocks.

"Don't do it, Verminaard," Aglaca urged, painfully fighting his own temptations. "If you choose this, you'll forget that you can ever choose again."

For you there is power, Lord Verminaard, and rule to be wrested in strength and violence. And there is the bridal of blood and night, the nuptials of your willing soul.

If you choose this, you will not need to choose again, for men will fall before you, and the fortresses of men.

"There are snares in that voice," Aglaca cautioned.

"So be it," Verminaard declared, lunging assuredly for the mace. "My power will free me from all snares."

"No!" Aglaca cried.

"Go home, little boy," Verminaard hissed, and grasped the handle of the mace.

Its dark fire coursed up Verminaard's clutching hand, raced through his wrist and forearm in rivulets of purple flame. Judyth's careful stitching burst apart on his arm, and the blood trickled forth, "steaming and boiling on the charged surface of his skin. Verminaard writhed in the pulsing flames, his grimace turning slowly to a dark, unholy leer as he broke the mace free.

Aglaca shouted and sprang toward Verminaard, but Judyth's strong grip held him back.

"There's nothing you can do," she urged. "He's in the hands of a goddess."

Slowly, reluctantly, the two backtracked to the mouth of the cave, where they stood shaking in the hushed night air, listening helplessly to the cries and shouts of the young man who tangled in the depths of the earth with stone and fire and absolute shadow.

Alone with the goddess, Verminaard gritted his teeth, exulting in the pain. His whole body bristled with glittering fire, and sparks scattered from his hair and fingers. The Voice returned, soothing and soft, motherly and yet uncomfortably seductive and strange, singing to him the last verse of the song that had drawn him here, the love song and dirge and lullaby wrapped in an intricate bewildering melody:

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.

And still Verminaard held on, marshaling the sum of his despair and his anger to cling to the weapon as it jolted and blistered him, as it staggered him until he grasped it mainly to keep his balance, to keep from falling to where he would never, never rise again.