Michael Williams - Before the Mask

He closed his eyes, gathering his courage and balance.

Do not listen to him, the Voice coaxed, rising from the shimmering head of the mace. He will hoodwink you with Solamnic lies.

No. Aglaca is trustworthy. That is why I want him as my captain. Ten years I have known him… ten years…

See. Test him and see.

"Have I ever lied to you, Verminaard?" Aglaca asked. "Would I lie to you now? Would I say, 'Yes, I shall serve you,' and then turn away when a safer moment could take me west to Solamnia, or a moment more dire, more dangerous, might let me betray you?"

But remember the hunt, the Voice insinuated. Remember the dmsil roots, and who returned with the girl…

With a deep breath, Verminaard leapt onto the battlement and walked slowly toward Aglaca. "It will be one or the other, Aglaca. Choose now. Either you serve me, here and now, or the girl is mine."

"Then there is one more choice," Aglaca replied. "Not to choose from the choices you offer."

"Do not listen to him!" Cerestes shrieked. "Help me! He will kill us both and take your castle!"

"He is the darkness on the moon. He is a dragon," Aglaca said, his voice low and soothing and persuasive. He stepped toward Verminaard on the narrow battlement, extending his hand.

A gesture of friendship. Or to seize the mace?

Verminaard edged forward, then back again.

"Set down the mace, my brother," Aglaca urged. "It holds you in the depth of enchantments. It is loose in your hand already. You felt it as you approached the castle, I know. Let me finish and you are forever free."

"Let him finish and we both are dead!" Cerestes cried, and rushed at Aglaca. Swiftly, with the grace of a dancer, the young Solamnic pivoted and kicked him back, and Cerestes clattered against the stone crenels. Aglaca steadied himself on the battlements between his old companion and the stunned mage.

Quietly, turning to Verminaard with a smile on his face, Aglaca began the last verse.

"And larks rise up like angels…"

The image of Abelaard flashed through Verminaard's mind, the pale eyes milky and uplifted, the pale hands groping for the hilt of a broken sword.

This is what Solamnia has given you, the Voice urged as Abelaard's eyes fixed upon his brother's in the twisting depths of Verminaard's imaginings. It has taken your brother away, and its lies have made you injure the one dear… one dear… The words echoed inside Verminaard's head.

"Like angels larks ascend…"

The voice went on, urgently, compellingly. Remember the cave and the strong surge of power. He would take that from you as well, as his father took your mother and your father… as he took your true brother Abelaard and the girl you had dreamed when she became Judyth. He took them all, and now he would take me from you… I, who am your sole confidante, your friend and lover and family as well.

Do you remember once, when the two of you spoke of me? He said, "I choose not to believe," and you thought, I choose not to believe Aglaca… not to believe Aglaca…

You have chosen already, Lord Verminaard. There is no going back. You are mine, always and forever. You have said.

I have seen Aglaca fight, Verminaard thought. He is swift and powerful. I could not defeat him even if I He is yours, the mace assured him. Be ruled by me.

Aglaca touched Verminaard's arm, and as he began to recite the penultimate line, the big man recoiled, as if something loathsome had attached itself to him. "Midnight!" he roared, and brought the mace, flashing with dajk and cold energy and malice as old as thought, toward the innocent face of his companion and brother.

Aglaca had scarcely time to cover his head when the mace struck his arms full force.

Gundling, standing by the portcullis below, heard the shriek of Nightbringer hurtling through the air and the sound of the impact, the snap of the young man's bones. The old guard raced to the bailey's edge and looked up on the ramparts where Aglaca reeled and fell to his knees, quietly breathing the last lines of the spell:

"From sunlit grass as bright as gems To where all darkness ends."

Gundling turned and raced toward the guardhouse.

As the chant ended, Verminaard felt the mace let go in his hand, felt the hand straighten and heal. He dropped Nightbringer on the stone of the ramparts as Cerestes rose slowly, still clutching his long dagger.

Time seemed to stop for a long breath, Aglaca's pain-dazed face unblinking, unseeing, as he stared into Ver-minaard's eyes. Cerestes stood, caught in the moon's dark glow, and Nightbringer looked for all the world like a cold cave rock, formed only of limestone and tears, all presence gone, all magic fled. A slow wailing began deep in Verminaard's throat and rose into the stillness.

He had blinded both brothers.

As Aglaca struggled to rise and failed, dazed and sightless on the battlements, his arms shattered, Verminaard stared down upon him, and for a moment, something like compassion crossed over his face like a brief flicker of flame.

And I have done these things, he thought. So there is no hope for me. No hope. I have chosen.

His howl died away, and he knelt and picked up the mace. Nightbringer awoke with a crackle, and this time there was no pain in his hand at all. The scar ran too deep. Coldly he stood above his dazed brother, who groped for the crenel, trying vainly to stand as Cerestes, with a rustle of black robes, slipped behind Aglaca and plunged the dagger once, twice, a third time into his back.

For a moment, the two of them stood there. Verminaard stared blankly at the mage, who looked back at him with a sly, exultant smile.

"His spell is broken as well," Cerestes whispered, lifting his dripping hands, and the blood and the red moonlight glittered upon newly formed scales.

Fifty miles away, in the infirmary of Castle East Borders, Abelaard sat upright in the bed and cried out.

He had dreamt of a song-some verse, some incantation-soothing words about day and light and larks and angels…

He lifted his hands to the bandages on his eyes, then sank disconsolately back upon the bed. There was no music in this absolute dark.

He remembered the last of the song in his dream, whispered the words to himself as the door opened in the far end of the infirmary, and he could tell by the footsteps and the bobbing light of the candle that the surgeon was making his nightly rounds.

The candle.

Abelaard sat bolt upright and called to the approaching doctor, called out in joy to guards on the bailey battlements, to the lord in the motte: "The candle! I can see!"

He leapt from the bed and lurched toward the source of the light, tearing the bandages off as he ran.

"Thanks be to Paladine!" he whispered, and lifted the astonished surgeon off his feet.

And to whoever had sung the forgotten song in his dreams, he offered thanks as well.

Judyth waited in the garden, but Aglaca did not come.

Long past the appointed time, she sat in the little clearing ringed with evergreens, marking the hours by the tilt of the moons in the sky. An owl cried ominously from the bare branches of the vallenwood, and when Judyth looked up, it was perched there, framed in the red light of Lunitari like something monstrous, glimpsed on a burning plain.

She felt hollow then, and alone. But not afraid. She had already passed through the country of fear. Aglaca had seen to that.

They had come to meet nightly in the garden, and each meeting had been an assurance. Aglaca had been cheery and humorous and confident, his affections strong and kind. Though the greatest of dangers had loomed before them, Aglaca's faith had bolstered them both. He had hoped in Verminaard, but he had believed far deeper things-that even if Verminaard failed him, there was a power, eternal and good, that undermined all of the weakness and treachery of those in Nidus and everywhere. And no matter the failures of mortals, that power would never fail.