Michael Williams: Before the Mask

I am going now, Verminaard thought. No matter what, I am going. Must gather myself… must stay under control. Father cannot see me shake… cannot see me…

"Where is the damned mage?" Daeghrefn thundered.

From behind him arose the sound of whispers, of urg-ings. Then the mage, Cerestes, brushed by, the hem of his dusty black robe grazing Daeghrefn's boot. He was young, dark-haired, handsome in a reptilian sort of way, his eyes golden and heavy-lidded.

"Where is Speratus?" Daeghrefn demanded. He little liked mages, keeping one at the castle only for defense. But this was not his archmage, only a mere pupil.

Cerestes presented his hasty services after a short explanation: The old mage, Speratus, had been found at the bottom of the chasm, no doubt besieged when he rode out alone to prepare the ceremony. His red robe had borne ragged evidence of the furtive, hooked daggers of Ner-akan bandits.

One mage was the same as another, Daeghrefn told himself. This young Cerestes seemed confident, even wiz-ardly. He would do. Anything to be rid of the boy. Solemnly the mage saluted his new employer and ushered Verminaard onto the spindly bridge.

"May the gods speed you, Verminaard," Daeghrefn breathed. He looked past the young wizard to the boy, who looked small and lonely as he neared the crown of the lofty arch. "At last you return to your father."

Abelaard looked up at him with a blank face, as unreadable as the soaring cliff, as the scattered rocks on the floor of the canyon.

The Bridge of Dreed was even more narrow than it appeared from the safety of the bordering cliffs. At the height of its arch, where the gebo-naud-the Solamnic rite of exchange-would take place, there was scarcely room for the two lads to stand side by side.

Verminaard moved steadily out toward the middle of the bridge. The Solamnic boy was less assured. He pulled on his hood and walked, heel cautiously in front of toe, weaving uncertainly, like an amateur ropewalker. As he approached from the west, the autumn winds ruffled his sleeves and the gossamer green of his family tabard.

Cerestes, as surefooted and sinuous as one of the huge panteras that were the bane of mountain herdsmen, followed Verminaard. At the last moment, the mage slipped impossibly past the lad and glided to the center of the bridge. There, standing between the two boys, he raised his hand to begin the incantations of the gebo-naud.

Suddenly there was an outcry from the platform.

Daeghrefn shifted uneasily, his eyes on the two boys.

"What's wrong, Father?" Abelaard asked. He asked again, and again, until Daeghrefn's seneschal, an older man named Robert, took pity on the lad's persistence.

"It'll be all right," Robert offered, leaning across his mare's neck toward the attentive boy.

"Hush, Robert," Daeghrefn ordered. "The ceremony begins."

But it did not begin. Cerestes strode westward from the center of the bridge and waved for one of Laca's retainers to meet him.

When the mage returned to the platform, he instructed the Solamnic boy to wait and brought Verminaard, bewildered, back to Daeghrefn's party.

"Lord Daeghrefn," he chimed, "the gebo-naud calls for the exchange of oldest for oldest. We will have your son Abelaard come forth."

A disembodied laugh echoed through the chasm as Laca received the same news. Daeghrefn clenched his teeth. Abelaard? he thought. This is ludicrous! I didn't agree to this.

Cerestes motioned for Abelaard to dismount and follow him.

"Hold!" Daeghrefn shouted. "There will be no exchange of oldest for oldest! Let Laca laugh, and let him die beneath Nerakan boots. It wasn't my castle that the hordes beseiged."

Cerestes turned. He spoke in hushed tones that melded with the tireless wind. "You cannot refuse now, Lord Daeghrefn. To end a gebo-naud once begun is an act of war."

Daeghrefn's face darkened, his eyes sparkling, inscrutable. He could defeat Laca in war, he was fairly certain of that-perhaps even hold at bay the Nerakan hordes while he did so.

As though listening to his lord's thoughts, the golden-eyed mage offered in conspiratory whispers, "You would more easily defeat Laca in alliance than in war, my Lord."

"You won't let Abelaard go!" Verminaard protested suddenly.

"Silence," the dark man growled, drawing tightly, reflexively, on his mount's reins. Daeghrefn lifted his head defiantly and whispered something through his bared teeth.

Only Robert heard him.

Flashing an iron-hard glare toward Abelaard, the Lord of Nidus spoke. "Go." He gestured broadly toward the awaiting mage, who extended a hand to the boy. With stone-hard features, the boy stepped from his mount and, sparing not a glance at his father, followed the mage.

In moments, the first words of the gebo-naud filtered to them in the midst of a shifting autumn breeze. The mage Cerestes lifted his hands, and a dark cloud pooled in the bottom of the gorge below. A hundred lights floated on its surface, until the cloud swirled and eddied and glittered like quicksilver.

"Let the mountains know," the mage began. "Let all assembled here-the garrisoned captains of East Borders and those of Castle Nidus-swear on their swords that they see what they see, and let them honor the change and surety of blood between these houses.

"Let the traded sons, Aglaca of East Borders and Abelaard of Nidus, find shelter and board, honor and comfort in their opposite homes.

"Let alliance rise from the commingling of houses.

"And if ill befall one lad, let the same ill befall the other.

"It is an oath secured by rock and air, by the bridge across the gap of the world."

Daeghrefn shifted in the saddle. These terms, at least, were the way he reckoned them.

Then the mage began the chant that would seal the bargain, would exchange one lad for the other in unsteady alliance.

"Son to son and truce to truth, Peace for blood and youth for youth, In high passages of stone The heart returns to claim its own."

The Solamnic boy moved forward to exchange places with Abelaard. For a moment, he wavered in his balance and looked down, light hair and light robe caught in a sudden gust of wind. The black cloud Cerestes had summoned rose now beneath the bridge, and tendrils of vapor wrapped about the boy's ankles, threatening to pull him down into the abyss.

He is frozen up there, Verminaard thought. Perhaps he won't do it.

Then the boy gathered himself and continued, urged on by his father. Cerestes spoke the second verse as the lads joined hands over the swirling mist.

"Let the words pass overhead, Heard by the memorious dead, Confirming what hearts have begun, Truce for truth and son for son."

Verminaard shuddered as the power of the words coursed over him, binding him as they did his father, his brother, and the pale Solamnics. This Aglaca was his brother now, his blood by oath until the Nerakans were subdued.

He was sure he would not like the boy.

Suddenly Verminaard felt dizzy. His sight flickered, failed him, and he weaved on his wobbly legs. In front of him, the bridge seemed to vanish, and with it the ceremony-the boys and the black-robed celebrant.

All Verminaard could see was darkness and a wavering point of light at the furthermost edge of the gloom. Slowly the light expanded, and he saw a blond youth on a dark, windy battlement, a lithe, blue-eyed, older image of himself.

Not me, he thought. A twin… my mirror image.

Not Abelaard, but still my brother.

The young man in the vision gestured toward him. His lips moved desperately in a soundless incantation, and Verminaard felt weaker, felt power drain from him…

And then the vision ended in cold sunset and the high, thin air of the mountains. Cerestes lifted his hands from the lads at the center of the bridge, and black lightning danced across his arms.