Michael Williams - Before the Mask

As she collected Aglaca's belongings, she collected her memories. Perhaps someday she would go back to East Borders, and there present these things to Aglaca's father. Perhaps the gift would make amends for her miserable failure as Laca's spy. But as for now, Aglaca's belongings were hers-the book, the locket, the ring, and even the mysterious dagger.

Now, as she reached the bottom of the steps, she tucked the package under her arm, feeling the sharp prickle of the blade's edge through the cloak. She stepped toward the door of the keep, toward the moonlit bailey and the spot where Robert would be waiting with a fast horse to take them south.

And a sudden crash stopped her in her tracks.

"Lady Judyth!" the voice called. "Do not leave without a fond good-bye."

She turned and stared through the open archway into the great hall of the keep, where Verminaard sat alone at the banquet table, a plate of roast goose steaming in front of him, a bottle of wine in his left hand. The glass he had been drinking from lay in splinters beneath the arch where he had hurled it, and the slivers caught the torchlight and glittered like broken ice.

He motioned to her with^the bottle. "Come in! Oh, do come in, Judyth of Solanthus!"

His right hand remained beneath the table. Judyth knew it clutched the mace.

Verminaard beckoned again, this time more insistently. Her hands shaking, Judyth stepped into the hall, the broken glass crackling beneath her riding boots.

"Where are you going?" Verminaard asked sternly. "I've not given you permission to leave, you know."

"I had no idea your permission was necessary, Lord Verminaard," Judyth replied evenly, pausing halfway to the edge of the table.

"Come closer," the new Lord of Nidus muttered hoarsely and set down the wine bottle. "Join me in a toast to my precipitate predecessor, Daeghrefn of Nidus. They're shoveling him under the bailey as we speak." He licked his fingers, one by one.

"I truly must be leaving, sir," Judyth said, backing toward the door. "I shall leave you to dinner with… your friends."

Verminaard gazed at her sullenly, wiping his mouth with his sleeve. "Won't you join me, Judyth? Are you not my friend?"

Slowly he stood, the wine bottle again in hand, the mace in the other, leering at Judyth as though she were the final course, the dessert to his lonely meal.

"No, sir," Judyth replied. "Nor am I likely to be your friend. You have killed too many who are dear to me."

"I have killed but one," Verminaard said, with a cruel half-smile.

"One is quite enough," Judyth replied.

"Even so. Cerestes' knife did that work," Verminaard explained lightly. He staggered from behind the table, taking a wobbly step toward Judyth.

She had seen that look on faces before-in the leering eyes of the bandits when first they brought her to the Pen in Neraka.

"But you blinded him first," she whispered, the slightest quaver in her voice. "So they tell me."

The wine bottle crashed to the floor, and the big man, incredibly quick, lurched toward her. Judyth turned and ran for the door, but Verminaard grabbed her, his thick fingers greasy and groping. She pulled away from him, holding the bundle to her breast, the hem of her gown smudged by his rough hands.

"I shall be leaving now, Lord Verminaard," she announced loudly and turned toward the door. "Stay here, if you will, and crown yourself king in a fallen castle."

"You are not in great favor with this court, Judyth of Solanthus," Verminaard growled. "But then you were never what I imagined. Such a disappointment… fit leavings for Aglaca, I'd wager. But now… well, now you will do."

He rushed toward her blearily, his arms extended, Nightbringer glimmering like a dark torch in his gloved hand. Seizing her, he drew her close, crudely and violently.

The knife! Judyth thought, instinctively raising the bundle. She brought up the packet suddenly, violently, as the sharp blade of the dagger slit through the green cloak and scored across the face of her assailant, a thin, shallow line from chin to forehead.

Verminaard reeled from her, howling and clutching his face. He banged Nightbringer on the stone floor in a flurry of black sparks, and smoke streamed from between his fingers.

Alarmed, but alert enough to seize her chance, Judyth rushed from the hall and out to the bailey. She dropped the bundle at the threshold, then crouched to quickly gather the belongings.

And shivered as the long cries from the hall became shrill and terrible.

Robert found her, as he knew he would, waiting in the garden.

There, in the ring of aeterna lovingly planted by his old friend Mort, he discovered the girl weeping, her lavender-blue eyes reddened and downcast.

"Oh, Robert!" She smiled up at him and rose to her feet.

"Come with me," Robert urged quietly and took her arm.

Gently Robert steadied the girl as they slipped through the topiaries, bright with autumn reds and violets, toward the stable, where the seneschal had kept a roan stallion saddled and ready for the trip to Berkanth.

But as they reached the edge of the garden, the tower bells began to ring.

"They're after us!" Robert hissed, pulling Judyth behind the vine-entangled gate. Together, breathless, expecting torches, search parties, and alarms, they stared across the open courtyard at a surprising and ominous sight: the bailey in the eerie red glow of Lunitari, the soldiers assembled around Aglaca's shrouded body, breathing the Solamnic prayers they scarcely remembered as they prepared to bury him amid the aeterna in his beloved garden.

The commotion came from the ramparts, where the garrison of Nidus rushed to man the walls, the archers hastening to the western gate, where the cry of the sentries rose above the tumult.

"Solamnia! The forces of Laca! Prepare for attack!"

"We're going nowhere now, m'Lady," Robert whispered, motioning for silence. "Even if we could cross that moonlit yard and get to the horse, there's no longer an unguarded gate in the castle. I taught these boys how to wait a siege, and if they listened at all, Nidus is shut tight against the enemy."

"Then just what do we do, Robert?" Judyth asked, drawing Aglaca's dagger, her lavender eyes flashing with anger.

"Not what you'd like to do, lady," Robert insisted, gently taking the weapon from her and slipping it into his belt. "We wait it out. We hope that Lord Laca has schooled his men even better."

Verminaard sat in Daeghrefn's old quarters, looking dolefully in the mirror.

He had slept for days-a strange and fitful sleep, filled with shapeless dreams and dark landscapes. He could tell as much by the moons and the shifting planets, from which he gained his only knowledge of time. For pride's sake, he dared not venture down into the keep, where his soldiers might see the wound the girl had given him.

The cut had never bled-not even a drop-but now, three days after his wounding, the scar was even worse. Jagged and purple-black, spreading from chin to forehead, it had branched and forked like a river in rocky country.

My glory is ruined, he thought bitterly. You would think that a wound such as this would be mortal, but it does not hurt. I can ho longer even feel it, and yet when I look in the mirror, the scar has spread even farther, to my ears and lips and my very eyelids. The skin is destroyed. My face is eaten alive by this wound.

I shall find that girl.

As he slipped the black cloth over the mirror, he saw Cerestes in it, entering the door behind him.

In Verminaard's absence, Cerestes had assumed defense of the castle. The spell that had bound his magic ended with Aglaca's death, and now the mage used every charm and enchantment he knew to bind the garrison to his com mand. But Cerestes had recovered only slowly from his own binding, and his spellcraft was still weak and tentative. Though he kept the soldiers in line for the moment, the mage looked haggard and drawn.